


Destiny Veiled - Season 0

by Elly_Sea



Series: Destiny Veiled Saga [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Kilgharrah Conspiracy Theory has a point, Why are all these prophecies so self-fulfilling?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 16:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 93,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17063138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elly_Sea/pseuds/Elly_Sea
Summary: No young man, no matter how great, can know his destiny.In the height of the Great Purge, Uther just kills the last dragon as he does every single other magical threat and unwittingly changes the course of history. Why, whatever are we to do with no Kilgharrah around to dictate the plot?Reposted from my fanfiction.net account





	1. 0x01 - The Last of the Dragonlords

Moonlight from a waning crescent moon shone down on a large clearing in woods outside of Camelot. It gleamed pale silver on the chain-mail of an entourage of knights surrounding a richly attired man with a crown. In front of them stood the last dragon, staggering from the fatal wound in its side, and a rough looking man who was also soon to be the last of his kind.

The dragonlord was too stunned to move, frozen in shock even after the Last Dragon fell to the ground as bloodied carcass before him. He merely stared at the felled beast, looking unable to believe what had just happened – as though expecting the dragon to stir any moment. He didn't even seem to notice Uther making hand signal or how he was suddenly surrounded. It wasn't until they started binding his hands that the dragonlord spoke.

"You swore you wanted to make peace with him," he whispered, still deep in denial. But, as though saying it aloud had broken through his shock, he came to life with a mighty wrench that sent two knights to the ground. "You  _swore -_ you  _SWORE!"_

More knights swarmed him, trying to restrain a man lashing back in mindless fury. "You  _swore,_   _you treacherous snake!_ "

Yet no matter how the dragonlord fought, he was still just one man. If he had used an enchantment he might have been able to escape, but either he didn't know any powerful enough to do so or in his distress had completely forgotten about magic. Uther was unsure which it was, but in either case, outnumbered as the man was, within five minutes the knights had him pressed to the ground. Seven knights held him down as they wound ropes securely around his limbs.

"Gag him," Uther ordered. "We don't want him escaping through his unholy powers."

Uther turned to go, though he could still hear the dragonlord thrashing on the ground and muffed, furious yelling. "Throw him into the dungeons for the night. His execution will be at noon tomorrow. See to it."

"Ye- argh! Sorry. Yes, Your Majesty," one of the knights behind Uther panted, as though he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. In all likelihood he had. The noise of the dragonlord's thrashing had risen with the word 'execution' and Uther could hear muttered swearing and scrambling on the part of his knights.

Uther mounted his stallion, left just outside the clearing lest the sight of the dragon spook him, and set off for his castle satisfied. He had entertained the thought of keeping the dragon alive and chained beneath the palace, but had quickly discarded the idea as too risky. He had made many powerful enemies in these last months who might find a way to free the beast. A vengeful sorcerer armed with a dragon was the last thing Camelot needed. It was better to err on the side of caution and only the dead were sure to never turn on him.

He never spared the sorcerers, why should he spare the dragon? What good would keeping it alive as a symbol of his power do if nobody ever saw it chained up? It was much easier and safer to just kill it.

He wished he could have killed the dragon in front of all his people, to boost morale after all the necessary devastation his Purge had brought about, but the dragonlord had insisted on meeting at night, fearing the dragon's approach would sow panic. It would have been impossible, anyways; Uther would never endanger innocent civilians by exposing them to a battle against such evil as a dragon and sorcerer. Still, he would have the dragon's head hanged in the square and its wings down the battlements of his castle so everyone could see that there were no more dragons to fear. Their king had rid them of them.

The dark shadows of the tree branches fell upon Uther, darkening his face, which was held high and proud.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Gaius had never felt so much like slime as he did under the gaze of the man trapped behind the iron bars of Camelot's dungeon. "You knew, didn't you?"

Gaius didn't answer, merely averted his eyes. His inability to meet Balinor's glare was confirmation enough. Gazing resolutely at the bars of the cage rather than the man in them, he clutched the tray in his hands as the guard slowly unlocked the door, keeping a wary eye on Gaius the whole time. Though he had sworn an oath in front of the entire court to renounce magic and never again practice it, everyone knew that Gaius had once possessed moderate skill in healing spells. He was not entirely trusted to be unbiased when faced with practitioners of magic.

Untrusted by the persecutors and despised by the persecuted. Such was the lot of a collaborator.

Gaius placed the tray on the floor just in front of the bars, and said as evenly and unemotionally as he could, "The King has granted you a last meal as a reward for your aid in the fight against magic. He advises you to enjoy it while you can and make your peace with God."

Balinor snarled, voice dripping with bitterness, "You can tell  _His Majesty_  that a full stomach will hardly be much good to me come morning and that the advice of a cowardly deceiver to make peace is laughable."

Gaius felt a flare of panic. "But regardless, surely you will eat? What earthly good does it do you to stay hungry out of stubbornness?"

Balinor scoffed, as though the very idea was ridiculous, and turned to face the wall. He was effectively ignoring Gaius as though he were nothing more than a gust of hot air, a childish reaction that was only too justified.

Gaius had indeed known of Uther's plans; perhaps he might have been able to warn Balinor. It was, however, the  _perhaps_  that had stayed him. As a former practitioner of magic he was treading on dangerous ground with every breath he took, permitted another only because of an oath and old friendship with the king. He needed to watch his every step, because if Uther had the slightest doubt about Gaius' absolute loyalty to the fight against magic then it would be his pyre that was built. He could have taken the risk, but the odds had seemed so out of his favour that he hadn't.

And Balinor would not forgive Gaius for standing by and letting him walk into a trap.

Burying his guilt under a bland expression, Gaius picked up the tray again and set it directly in front of Balinor. He hesitated for a moment, the back of his neck prickling under the guard's gaze, and weighed his words carefully. "Well, perhaps you will change your mind. I'll leave it here in case you do."

Gaius turned and left, the prison door clanking shut behind him and the guard returning to his post outside. As he made his way from the dungeons, he prayed to every deity he'd ever heard of that Balinor would eat.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Inside the cell Balinor lifted the cup, intending to throw it at the wall in a fit impotent rage, and found a slip of old yellow parchment hidden underneath. Squinting at it, his eyes grew wide as he read a terse note.

_Eat it all. Make for Ealdor in Cenred's kingdom. Destroy this as soon as you've read it. I know it means nothing, but I'm truly sorry._

Balinor glanced down at the tray. It looked like perfectly normal food. He glanced back at the note. It still said the exact same thing. He looked between the two a couple more times, wondering what the devil Gaius thought he was up to and why if he had room on the parchment to include an apology he couldn't find space to elaborate a little more on how the disjointed sentences amounted to spiriting Balinor out of his cell and safely away to Cenred's kingdom. But then that might have been his intention; the less written down the less incriminating it was if it fell into the wrong hands.

Balinor raised the cup again, sniffing it suspiciously, poking at the liquid, and examining it the best he could in the meagre light the dungeon afforded. As far as he could tell, it was water. With what he felt was a healthy amount of scepticism towards Gaius' vague plot, Balinor raised the cup to his lips and took an experimental sip. He had to forced himself not spit the liquid back out.

It had a bitter, acrylic taste and cloyed thickly on his tongue, lingering unpleasantly in his mouth. Whatever it was, it was certainly not water or any other refreshment. It was a potion. Gaius, the collaborator who swore off magic in return for clemency, had brewed him a magical potion and snuck it into the dungeons under Uther's very nose.

Despite himself, Balinor was impressed.

He ate with a wild fervour, devouring the (completely disgusting, what in all the names of the Great Leviathans of yore did Gaius use as ingredients?) food and drink as though he had never seen food in his life. After he did, Balinor sat against the dungeon wall, waiting. Nothing happened. He waited still. Still nothing. The guard changed twice, and still nothing.

Just as Balinor was coming to the bitter conclusion that Gaius's rusting skills in sorcery had mucked up the potion, the sun started to rise, peaking through the dungeon bars faintly. Instantly, Balinor felt magic bubbling up within himself like boiling water against the lid of a kettle.

Though it was a little known fact, Camelot's dungeons were bespelled to dampen and drain all magic, the spell dating back ten years to the Sorcerer King Vortigern who had ruled Camelot before Uther. When Uther had defeated Vortigern and reclaimed his castle, he had gotten rid of many of the enchantments hanging around the place, but kept the more useful ones, such as the dampening spell on the dungeons. The hypocrisy of using magic to stop sorcerers from escaping when said sorcerers had been arrested for their magic was not lost on Balinor.

It would appear, then, that Gaius had given Balinor a strength potion. One that strengthened his magic and activated when the sun rose. The reason for the second stipulation became clear when a guard opened his door and said,

"Out you get, the execution's to be at first light by the king's orders!" Balinor nodded, approaching with his hands up to show he was unarmed. The guard undid the chain around his ankles, and Balinor smiled darkly.

A flash of gold and a mumbled word in the Old Tongue later, and the guard was slumped unconscious on the floor.

Balinor ran.

He encountered more guards on his way out, each swiftly dispensed with his strengthened spells. Giddy with lack of air, the potion, and the adrenaline urging him onwards faster and faster, Balinor scarcely processed his flight to freedom. It was a blur of running and guards and the warning bell, all running together so he could not tell what was happening when. Each step he took became less and less clear, until the whole world ran together in a blur of moving colours. He could feel himself racing through it, as though jerked about on puppet strings, but which direction he was headed or his surroundings were mysteries to his befuddled mind.

Then suddenly he was blinking awake with a splintering headache, ominous hissing surrounding him from all directions. He grimaced, and something flaky crusted across his cheeks cracked. He was lying face first in a puddle of dried sick. Revolted, he shakily pushed himself away… and promptly realized he had bigger problems than sleeping in vomit.

The hissing was coming from a ring of encroaching serkets, wanting him for breakfast. Glancing upwards and dully noting that the sun was past the half way point and beginning its downward descent, he amended that to  _late lunch._ Balinor wondered dazedly if it was even the same day as when he broke out of the dungeon.

Clearly, Gaius' potion had side effects.

Pushing himself upright, he hurled a volley of spells at the serkets to force them to retreat. His magic screamed inside him like a strained muscle that he was putting too much weight on, protesting every spell he used. He pushed himself off the ground, intent on fleeing, and the world lurched wildly as though he was on a plank of wood in choppy waters. Balinor brought a hand up to his mouth and closed his eyes, fighting back nausea. He didn't dare keep them closed long, though, with the serkets still nearby.

Sluggishly, he dragged himself forward on his hands and knees. Simple blasting spells held the serkets off temporarily, but he had to wrestle with his magic for each one.

And so Balinor did the only thing a person in his position could do: he climbed a tree.

He could hear the serkets launching themselves after him, their pinchers flailing against the thick oaken trunk. He sent out a blasting spell every couple of minutes in the vague direction of the racket. He couldn't quite make out where they were; his vision lurched and careened and refused to focus on what he needed it to. It was a miracle he'd managed to get up the tree at all.

From there he had no choice but cling on white-knuckled as his vision spun. He could only hope that the serkets would give up soon, and no knights of Camelot would ride by. He could not have picked a more visible location if he had tried.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

The serkets gradually wandered off one by one, but Balinor didn't dare move from his uncomfortable position. It would be night soon, and Balinor dared not light a fire for fear of attracting the notice of Uther's men. Without a fire to deter predators, a restless night dozing in a tree was a safer bet than one helpless on the ground.

In any case, he had nothing but the clothes on his back; the only way to start a fire was with magic, and currently Balinor's magic had sunk deep into him. Reaching for it was akin to prodding at a gaping sore. The damage did not particularly surprise him; after all, he had lost his one remaining soul-brother, spent a night being drained of his magic, taken a stimulus potion, fought his way out the city, and ran more leagues in a day than was non-magically possible. Even magic could only take so much abuse before it faltered.

The night in the tree was every bit as uncomfortable as Balinor imagined. He picked a branch that was high enough that nothing from the ground could take a swipe at him, but thick enough that his legs could stretch out without slipping. He leaned against the trunk, cursing himself for not being prepared enough to carry rope to secure himself with. But then why should he have brought rope, when he had dressed for a diplomatic meeting? He was a fool for taking Uther at his word, supposed man of honour or not.

He could not allow himself think further on what happened, not now. There would be time, later, to mourn and blame himself for his naivety which killed his kin and cost him everything, but for now he could not think on it without breaking. And if he broke, here and now, then he would surely die and Uther would have truly won. So he forced himself not to think.

Instead he occupied himself with the discomfort the bark digging into his legs and spine brought, with the strange nocturnal noises of the forest, with anything except all he had lost. He had to survive this, somebody needed to remember those who had died, somebody needed to remember what a hypocritical double-crossing bastard Uther Pendragon was. If Balinor died then the dragons and dragonlords as more than a footnote in old books, a people exterminated by naive belief in a mad king. As long as he lived though, as long as they never caught him, they would know he was out there. They would fear him as the one who got away. And as long as they remembered him, they would remember his kin, lured out and slaughtered by a man who promising peace. As long as Balinor lived, Uther Pendragon would not be able to brush what he had done under the rug.

He had to get out of this alive, no matter what. With that conviction, Balinor started thinking beyond his present situation.

Reading the night sky was something all dragonlords learned as small children. Dragons were masters of it, often flying with nothing but the stars as their guide, but all dragonlords could proficiently navigate by the stars. Balinor had headed in the right direction for Cenred's kingdom. In fact, he was probably only a few hours from the border. He shut his eyes a moment, blessing Gaius for the potion and profusely apologizing for thinking ill of him. There was no way he could have travelled such a large distance on foot in such little time without the magical boost.

He didn't know where Ealdor was, but once he made it past the border he could approach the outlying villages, asking for directions. He drafted a simple excuse for seeking it: a friend of his had died recently, and he wanted to inform the family, but all he knew was the name of the man's hometown. It was plausible enough to not attract too much scrutiny. It was trickier to explain his lack of supplies; Balinor could only hope that his story of being waylaid by bandits would render him sympathy rather than suspicion.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do when he reached Ealdor. Was Gaius planning on meeting him there? Did he know someone there? Was that just a town that Uther wouldn't strike against for some political reason? Was it safe to ask the townspeople if they knew Gaius? Balinor wished Gaius' note had included more detail, even though if Gaius had a contact there he would be right not to jeopardize their safety with written evidence. Including the town name was risky enough, but he supposed Gaius was counting on Uther to not wanting to start a war by razing an entire municipality for the potential actions of one of the residents.

Balinor closed his eyes, now heavy with lack of sleep, and sighed. He dared not think of the past for fear of losing himself to guilt-ridden grief, and the future was as uncertain as the rippling reflection of an unclear shape in the water. His present was nothing to celebrate either, alone in the dark, balanced on a tree branch and unable to sleep without falling to his death.

The night was long, the waning moon his only company as wild cries echoed from below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, before even the start of series one I killed off the scriptwriter's biggest plot device, the CGI dispenser of unhelpful foreknowledge and the magical means to defeat the foe-of-the-week!
> 
> I have two major reasons for doing this:
> 
> 1) The second Gaius said Uther kept one dragon alive as an 'example' I thought to myself, "Weak. That is a weak excuse. They just wanted to have a dragon on the show to provide a convenient source of selectively omniscient knowledge for their young protagonist." The more I saw of Uther, the more convinced I became that that explanation was complete BS. Where else in the show does Uther ever say, "We must make an example of him... by keeping him alive"? Nowhere. When Uther wants to make an example, it's by execution.
> 
> 2) Since all these prophecies seem largely self-fulfilling, I've always wondered what would happen if nobody told them to Merlin. To get this to happen, the blabbermouth dragon had to die.
> 
> Anyways, this is "Season 0" where I deal with all the immediate repercussions of killing the dragon before where Season 1 picks up the story. Because when writing this I couldn't convince myself the older generation's actions would pan out the same without the dragon. It was like the proverbial elephant in the room for these people, never acknowledge but they all knew it was chained up under Camelot. So this is what they would have done if there wasn't that consideration to take into account.


	2. 0x02 - Strangers Under One Roof

In a darkened room lit only by the cracks in the wood between the planks of the door and the diminishing stump of a candle, Hunith wrapped a bundle of cloths around a tiny, squalling figure. With a pleased expression on her face, she smiled at the red-faced, panting woman lying on the cot beside her. "It's a boy."

The woman stretched out her arms and gingerly took the bundle of swaddling cloth, tentatively running a finger down the tiny face in front of her. "William," she crooned, "You're my William. Like your daddy."

From the shadows near the doorway, the man in question stepped forward, pressing a coin into Hunith's hand. With a quick word of thanks, the man walked over to put his hand on his wife's shoulder, standing comfortingly beside her. The woman glanced up at him, exchanging a long look of pure love with her husband, and together they directed that loving, proud look at their newborn son.

Hunith slipped quietly out the door, not wishing to intrude on such an intimate moment, a smile still playing across her face. The bright sunlight stung her eyes after the dimness of the birthing room, but after a moment her eyes adjusted and she straightened up her headscarf. The position of the sun told her the cow was likely lowing in displeasure, her stomach heavy with milk. With a brisk step Hunith made her way to the animal shelter, humming under her breath.

Hunith enjoyed the times when putting her meagre knowledge to use aided in the everyday scrapes that came with peasantry life. She was the best a small village like Ealdor could hope for, and what she made on the side helping the villagers with their lesser ills and injuries went a long way in supporting herself as an unmarried woman living alone. She loved the role of healer-woman she played for the village, and births were by far her favourite to help with.

As a little girl, Hunith had been the child who carried around her straw doll everywhere, spoonfeeding it at dinnertime and changing its imaginary nappies, telling off teasing boys not for what they were doing to her, but because they were upsetting her "baby". Even as she grew into her teen years, it had been her dearest dream to someday be like the mother from earlier herself. A baby sleeping in her arms, a vaguely featured yet kind-looking husband standing alongside her, maybe a few older children tugging on the hem of her dress asking eagerly to see their baby sibling's face... but as an unmarried woman of twenty-five she had to face reality and admit her chance of that kind of life was sinking with each passing year. Not that she’d had much of one to begin with.

Hunith may not have received a conventional education, but she could read and write and knew more than a fair bit about herbs and the human body. It was a trait attractive for a healer, not a wife, and none of the village men had glanced at her after she received a letter from her brother and they discovered her literacy. Initially she'd been disappointed, but that had been nearly eight years ago now. She'd long ago made peace with the knowledge that few men wanted to marry a woman smarter than them, and found joys in her life that didn't involve a family of her own. Sometimes it got a little lonesome returning home to an empty cottage, but she had lots of friends - even if all of them were now married with children and seldom had the time for her anymore - and she managed well enough alone.

These days she contented herself with the sight of other women's children running around the village, and told herself that as the midwife she too had a role in bringing these little ones into the world. And if she doted a touch excessively on each of the village children, or privately frowned at their exasperated mothers and told herself she'd do a much better job if given a chance, well, who was to know?

But today was not a day to envy. It was a good day; she had helped bring a child into the world, and she could not envy the parents their joy when she was so full of her own. Despite being fetched from her cot when the moon was still hanging as a growing sliver of silver in the night sky and spending the next twelve hours in a stifling birthing room, Hunith felt nothing today could dampen her good mood.

Then she saw a strange man lurking outside her lean-to shelter, and it hissed away like a merry little fire doused with a bucket of water. His was wearing well-cut clothing that Hunith's peasant's eyes pegged as being bought from a tailor, not hand-spun. They were worn, not in the way that suggested age but in a way suggesting recent travel or work. Course dark hair framed his long face, the shadow of a beard creeping across the bottom as if he was used to shaving but recently was unable to. Something about the way he held himself reminded the lowborn woman of the local lord's son, from the little she had seen of him on his routine patrols, and there was something about him that spoke of power, though she couldn't name what made her think it. His dark eyes didn't seem to want to settle on anything, constantly flickering to and fro with a steely look in them. They noticed her almost immediately, settling on her with an intensity that was smouldering.

Alarm bells were ringing in her head; this was not just a peasant from a nearby village coming to her for a broken leg or colicky child. A knight perhaps, or the disgraced son of a lord more likely considering his appearance of a well-to-do man who’d recently hit some trouble. She had no idea what someone like that would want with her. Perhaps he was one of Cenred's tax-collectors, here to demand she pay him Cenred's ludicrously high rate plus whatever additional charge he intended to pocket. Or perhaps he was sent from Camelot, heaven knows her recent nightmares all featured men in red capes dragging her away. Or perhaps he had fallen in with the wrong crowd and was sent to... she didn't even know what. Demand she hand over money or he would rough her up?

Or perhaps he was a perfectly innocent man with perfectly innocent reasons to be lurking outside her door, staring at her with eyes that seemed to burn right through her to her very soul, revealing a woman who was much less self-assured than she'd like people to believe. She'd never find out if she just stood there.

Squaring her shoulders and self-consciously brushing down her skirts - dusty from hours of kneeling on the floor holding the young mother's hand - as best she could, Hunith walked straight up to the stranger with her head held high and a non-expression on her face to hide her nervousness.

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

The man shifted slightly on his feet, turning to better face her. His deep voice was gruff, as though he did not often speak and it had grown scratchy from disuse, "I'm waiting for a woman who I'm told lives here... Hunith?"

That last word was a question all on its own, not so much inquiring whether he had got the name right as it was asking her to supply more information. Trying to hide her growing alarm, Hunith asked as neutrally as she could. "Who's looking for her?"

"My name's Keith." The man said with a deliberate studiedness that Hunith had been hearing a lot in the last months. The spark of an idea was kindled in her mind by that too-familiar tone, so she was not as surprised as she would otherwise have been when he continued with, "I was sent here by Gaius. I was told she knows him."

Hunith's shoulders sagged in relief; Gaius had never sent anyone dangerous her way. At last letting her guard drop and trying to rekindle her ruined good mood, she smiled a bit shakily. "Well, you've found her. I'm Hunith." Bypassing the animal shelter and opening the door to her house, she said, "Why don't we go inside?"

The man followed after her without a word, shutting the door behind him. Hunith moved to lower the window shade, even though it was the only light source. Darkness enveloped them, only a little light trickling in from the crack under the door. She beckoned the man away from the window and door, glancing at each before saying in a voice that was as soft as she could make it and still be audible. "You say Gaius sent you. You came from Camelot, then?"

The man nodded. It was difficult to tell what his expression was in the dark, which did little to reassure her. Hunith pushed aside her doubts - of course he looked sketchy, they all did after being chased through the wild, just most of them had seemed a lot more helpless and thus easier to sympathise with. It was easy to pity those who looked pitiful. They'd also all worn old hand-spun cloth, and seemed like people she could pass in a village like Ealdor without thinking anything remarkable about them. The stranger in front of her was not like that.

Even just standing in the dark of her one-room cottage, he drew the eye as though power was an invisible cloak on his shoulders. She wondered who he was before he had been forced to flee; he seemed as different to the terrified, wounded people who knocked on her door quivering as they whispered "Are you Hunith?" as the lord of this area was to a lowly peasant like her. Hunith did not have good experiences with people of power. She'd seldom seen them do any good for anyone lower than them, and even the good some of them did do was nothing she would have found remarkable had it been done by a lower born person.

Nonetheless, it was the physician’s code to help all in need equally, regardless of ones feelings of the person in particular, and though Hunith was not herself a physician she had been raised by them. Offers of assistance were not meant to be limited by things like the possibility of catching the illness oneself, whether the person could rob one blind the moment one turned ones back on them, or whether one was a woman living alone and the person in need of assistance was a tall, powerful man who could easily overpower her if he was so inclined.

 _It is not good to doubt others’ intentions,_ she told herself firmly. If she turned away everyone who might somehow hurt her, she'd be condemning a lot of people to perfectly preventable suffering.

Hunith pressed on, choosing the same careful words she had learned to use with the foreign guests after she had blundered her way through the first few encounters. "And you left in a hurry, I dare say?"

Again, the man nodded, giving her no further explanation. She hardly needed one - it was not as if he was the first. Besides his look of fallen nobility, another reason as to why she had not immediately recognized him as one of Gaius's refugees struck her then; he had nothing with him, not even a small bag crammed in haste with the bare essentials. They had all had something, either what they could grab as they ran or what Gaius provided them when he sent them off. They had also all known her name, but he had had to ask.

She had a horrible feeling about this. She broke one of her personal policies and asked a question she normally never would. "Where are you headed to after this?"

The man sounded uncertain for the first time. "Gaius told me to come here. There was nothing after that in his note."

"Note?" she questioned in a high voice. All the others had spoken to Gaius in person. "May I see it?"

"I destroyed it after reading it."

Either he was making it all up, trying to catch her in a trap and drag her off to be beheaded for sheltering sorcerers, or else he was in straits more desperate than the others she had fed and housed and sent on their way.

The ground beneath her feet felt more flimsy than it usually did. What was she to do? Could she trust him? She had to, didn't she? What kind of person would she be if she turned him away and this turned out to be his greatest hour of need? She wouldn't be able to live with herself, always wondering what had become of the man she turned her back on. Besides, he had mentioned Gaius. No one knew of Gaius's role in helping escaping sorcerers - surely the news of the execution of the Royal Physician of the kingdom Ealdor bordered would have reached her. He was more likely to be telling the truth than lying.

But he'd already spoken to her neighbours. How would they explain this away to them? How long would he be staying with her? How could she share her home indefinitely with someone she didn't know?

Doubts never helped anyone. She would just have to do it, and deal with everything as it came. She had a standard of personal integrity she was beholden unto herself to uphold, and doing less than everything she could to help someone in need was not an option.

She said staunchly, mustering up all the false bravado she had to use as the closest thing Ealdor had to a healer and the only woman in the village who could get away with bossing around the men, "While you're here, Keith is as good a name as any. What did you tell people when they asked why you were looking for me?"

"That I was bringing news of my friend's death to his next of kin."

Hunith distractedly fiddled with a stray lock of hair while she thought, as though that small action could chase away the uncertainty clenching her innards. "Your friend, he could be my... second cousin. And the reason you can't go back after delivering the message... because you lost your job. With my second cousin's death. Because... because he was your boss! Yeah! You worked for him as his assistant. Gathering herbs, delivering potions... stuff that an old physician can't get up to on his own. But you didn't pick up any employable skills while there, so..."

"...so I came here to try my luck in farming." The man finished, sounding as though he were actually nothing more than an out of luck former apprentice concluding his tale to his potential landlady. Relief coursed through Hunith at how quickly he caught on - the ones who couldn't lie to save their lives were the worst.

"And I decided to take you in, being grateful for your kindness to my cousin." Hunith strode over to the window, throwing it open to let light stream in. Grabbing a pail, she headed for the shelter, calling louder than strictly necessary. "Of course, Keith, of course you can stay! How could I turn away someone who stayed with poor, dear old cousin Marcus up until he breathed his last? Please, make yourself comfortable. I must go milk the cow, but I shall be back as soon as possible."

Hunith had scarcely begun the milking when Old Ann next-door stepped out her house. Looking more surprised than she should at the sight of Hunith going about her daily chores, she hobbled towards her with a quickness that she didn't often display at her age. With a smile that attempted to look natural, she exclaimed in feigned warmth, "Hunith my dear! How good to see you! How are you this fine day?"

Schooling her face into casual pleasantry, Hunith replied, "I am fine, thanks for asking. How are you?"

"Oh, very well, thanks." Eyes gleaming like a magpie, she continued with feigned naturalness, "I thought I heard something just now - might have just been my imagination, ears aren't as good as they once were - something about a guest?"

"Oh," Hunith said in surprise, as if she hadn't shouted it for half the street to hear, "Oh you heard that, did you? Yes, that's right. My second cousin Marcus just passed away - poor old man, ever since his wife died his health hasn't been what it used to be - so his assistant came to give me the news. Very sweet of him, don't you think? He went to inform Gaius - you remember him, of course - first and then journeyed here all the way from Camelot."

"How kind of him." Old Ann simpered. "It's so nice you're letting him stay for... I'm sorry, dear, how long did you say?"

"I have no idea. Without Marcus, he's lost his only livelihood. I can hardly turn him out, now can I?"

"Quite. Poor... oh, he's name must have slipped my mind."

"Keith."

"Oh yes, that's right. Handsome fellow, isn't he?" Old Ann said, apparently done pretending not to have been glued to her window the moment she caught the wiff of a gossip-worthy story loitering outside of her unmarried neighbour's home. "Around your age, I should think. It's good having a nice, strong man around."

With a satisfied air, she said, "If you'll excuse me dear, I think I'll go see how my daughter is getting along with the little ones." Old Ann shuffled down the street, and Hunith ducked her head to hide her satisfied smile. No doubt juicy rumours of Hunith's poor, kind, handsome guest - who was of excellent age to make a good match with poor unmarried Hunith - would be known by every wife in the village by the time Old Ann arrived back home. For once, pushy old matrons poking their noses in Hunith's non-existent love life would work in her favour, or rather in Keith's.

By the time the men came home from the fields, "Keith" was a new but accepted part of village life. It was one hurdle taken care of, and she counted it as a victory, even if it resulted in raised eyebrows and sly smirks from nearly all the people she knew.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

It was lucky it was summer, or else Hunith would not have had enough blankets to share with her guest. As it was he was substituting a bag of chicken feed for a pillow. Although Hunith apologized and assured him she was spinning more bedding, he did not complain. In fact, the man said very little at all, even when "welcomed" by Old Ann next-door with a stew and barge of questions of which an uncomfortable amount concerned his love life. The only thing Hunith learned from his terse answers was that he was not, and had never been, married. Old Ann's eyes had gleamed at this news, and Hunith shuddered to think of the sly matchmaking schemes cooking behind those crow-like eyes.

He slipped into village life like a shadow, rising before dawn to work the fields like all of them did. With him working in the fields in her place, Hunith stayed at home spinning away to double the bedding, and they only saw each other when he came home for meals. Hunith had the strange feeling she was being cast in the role of housewife, to a stranger she was not even married to. Yet she could not grudge the reprieve - strange though it felt - and the chance to finally get to cleaning tasks she had left off for far too long. Usually they piled up while she worked the field or tended to the ill, until one of her neighbours overly casually volunteered to help her with her housekeeping. Though she was grateful for the help, it was embarrassing to have to accept.

The days went by since his arrival, but she and the man going by the name Keith had not properly spoken once. The hushed conversion of unsaid words when they first met was the closest they had come to talking, the rest of the time they only communicated when necessary. "Supper's ready" or "No, let me" or "Thank you" were the extent of their conversations, and even then it was Hunith doing the speaking. "Keith" hadn't said anything since Old Ann had barged in to pull monosyllabic answers from him.

It was safer this way, Hunith knew in her head, and it was a policy she had implemented with the others Gaius had sent her. The difference, she was finding out, was that while letting a stranger stay the night with no questions asked was fairly easy, letting one share her home indefinitely was not so.

It was strange to live so silently with someone else around; it was nothing at all like the easy companionship with her guardians that she remembered from the years before she lived alone. She suddenly missed having her home all to herself. Although it had been lonely sometimes, it was always there to welcome her after a hard day. These days her sanctuary of rest left her feeling on edge with the additional presence of someone she did not know what to make of. She itched to dispel the silence with chatter, the way she often did around patients that occasionally found their way into her home while recuperating. However, there was something dark in his eyes so that made the words die in her throat.

And that was the true problem of the matter: there was something dark about Keith, and had he not said he was sent by Gaius she would have even said there was a sense of danger about him. She had a hard time grasping just what it was, but the little things he did - slamming doors, glaring holes into the walls with his moody staring, stomping rather than walking, his terse one-word answers to all the questions the curious villagers asked him - all of it set her on edge. It wasn't that he had done anything to her - he hadn't - it was that she had no idea what he was thinking behind those dark eyes.

She could feel those eyes on her whenever her back was turned, though she had never caught him staring. As soon as she'd turn around she'd see he was looking in the opposite direction, but when she'd turn away she could feel his gaze on her once again. She told herself she was being hypocritical, as she was often sneaking glances at him too. After all, with the thick silence of matters of any real importance lying between them, she knew nothing about what type of person he was, only that he knew Gaius and even then she was just taking his word for it.

She tried telling herself that she was being unreasonable, that he had given her no reason to be wary of him. Except when Hunith looked into her guest's eyes, she thought she saw a dark undercurrent lurking there. And when she did, Hunith lost whatever desire she had to discover what lay under the deceptively calm surface of "Keith".

In the end, it was Keith himself who broke the tacit silence of their living arrangement.

It was night time, long after she had blown out the last candle, but Hunith had been unable to sleep. She'd finally finished the new bedding and had put away her winter supplies, and it was beginning to dawn on her that she truly didn't know how long Keith would be staying with her. All the other people Gaius had sent her way had not stayed long. She had only asked where they were going the first time, and in return had garnered nothing but a suspicious rebuttal of why she wanted to know, but she imagined they had other friends or family to stay with, or perhaps some skill that did not paint them as targets in the war against magic that was sweeping far past Uther's border. Most of them had had some supplies, even if only a small bag with a few necessities thrown in.

But as she'd noted from the first day, Keith had no bag. He hadn't known her name either, had had to ask around and arose the attention of her nosy neighbours. He hadn't asked her for supplies, nor to let him stay the night. He had seemed just as lost about what to do as she had felt. And so she had opened her home to him, because he had come looking for it without even knowing her name, with no alternative available to him. She had known then that he would stay longer than her other guests and had thought she understood the indefinite nature of the time spent living together.

But it was only then, as she finished Keith's bedding and put away her winter blankets, that she wondered if it would become a permanent fixture of her house. If Keith would continue to sleep across the cottage from her. If every night she would lie there, as she was now, feeling him looking at her in the dark and the skin of her neck rising as she wondered why it was that he was always looking at her. It was then, in the dark and being watched, that Hunith could not help herself from thinking that she was like a naive lamb inviting a masked man into her home, and wondering what would she do if when the mask was lifted it was a wolf staring back at her.

Heart beating too fast and eyes shut too tightly, she was so fervently counting sheep ( _two thousand three hundred twenty-two, two thousand three hundred twenty-three..._ ) that she almost missed that life changing whisper,

"Why are you doing this?"

It was more words than either of them had spoken to each other since their hushed introduction a week ago.

Abandoning her futile efforts to will the obliviousness of sleep onto herself, Hunith sat up and faced where she knew he slept. The windows were shut for the night, and all that surrounded them was blackness, but she had a sense that he was not just lying in his bed roll any longer, either. Staring out into the darkness, she asked,

"P-pardon?"

"You're risking your life to hide me." He said listlessly, as though it was a puzzle he had been turning over and over, trying to shove squares in round pegs, until he'd finally thrown up his hands and fallen to the floor, too tired to consider it any longer. "You're sharing everything you have with me, even though you don't even know my name. Not only that, I've seen the way your neighbours whisper about us. There's nothing in this for you. And I know you're uncomfortable around me - what woman living alone wouldn't be nervous about opening her home to a man she knows nothing of?"

The darkness hid her shame-faced blush. She had no idea her silent stranger was so perceptive. "It's not that I think you'll try anything - you've had more than enough opportunity to already, if you were that kind of man - it's just..."

"I know," bitterness dripping from his words like acid. Hunith had the feeling that he wasn't speaking of him and her when he said, "Oh believe me, I know that people can't always be trusted, no matter how honeyed their words."

"I'm sorry." She whispered, wishing her covers would swallow her whole. She'd take the uneasy silence over this mortifying exposure of all her ugly doubts. "You've done nothing to make me doubt you."

"Don't be. You can't trust people. I'm not blaming you, I just -" frustration crept into the man's voice. "I just don't understand why you're giving so much, for someone who for all you know could turn around and stab you in the back when you're least expecting it."

She swallowed, her throat clogging and eyes stinging. She had known, of course, that life had not been kind to this man. He was one of Gaius's refugees, after all. She had even suspected that he had lost far more than the others who found their way to her door, that the darkness in his eyes that frightened her had its foundations in injustice and cruelty. But it hurt, to hear anyone question an act of kindness as though it was unfathomable.

He needed to hear her answer, to understand that there was goodness in people as well as the bad which had brought about his suffering. And perhaps she needed to tell someone about all she had been holding inside since the Purge began, before the secret feelings she kept from her village friends ate away at her. "I don't know. I just... It just... It isn't right. I've visited Gaius in Camelot before, meeting his friends. Alice, the Muirdens, Julian... they were nice people, or at least when I met them they were. I've never given much thought to magic - whether it's right or wrong - but if Gaius and his friends are good, how can it corrupt?"

Voice heavy in her throat, the memory of a tear stained letter shone white in her mind against the surrounding darkness. "And then Gaius wrote about... about Gregor and Jaden... I couldn't light a fire for weeks. So I wrote him back, saying I wanted to help. And two weeks later, a young man knocked on my door at night. He was holding a little girl - I think she was his daughter or little sister, but him wouldn't tell me - and he had a bandage wrapped all down his right arm. He handed me a letter from Gaius, asking if I would look after them while they recovered and send them on their way with provisions. They left after just a couple of days. More people came after them. I couldn't turn them away. I... I live right on the border. These people... they run and run to escape from Camelot, then cross the border and realize that crossing it hasn't solved all their problems at all. Most of them were wounded, none of them had everything they needed, some looked half-starved... If not me, then who?"

"But they never stayed." It was a question as much as an observation, asking words that one stranger could not ask another, not now after all this time of living separate lives under the same roof. _Why are you letting me?_

Hunith could not reply, because she could not articulate it, even to herself. Instead, she said, "No." A myriad of faces swam in her memory. All with the eyes of the hunted, all with expressions of exhausted grief, like they were so tired they could not even muster up the energy to mourn as they needed to. In her heart she prayed to all the gods she'd ever heard of that the people those faces belonged to were still safe.

They didn't say another word to each other that night, falling into silence once more. It was a different kind of silence though. If the silence between them before had been a wall, then their short conversation had torn it down, leaving just him and her, laying across the room from each other.

It wasn't that she truly knew him any better. She still didn't even know what his name was. Sitting in the dark, thinking, Hunith could only conclude it was that he was more real to her now they had spoken. He had a past which she knew nothing about and was surely filled with horrifying things to make him so jaded towards the goodness in humanity, but it was a real tangible past instead of terrible imaginings her mind inflicted on her. He had his own doubts and worries just like her, and just like she didn't know what to make of him so he didn't know what to make of her.

They had been forced into this situation and though they both could have walked away, neither of them did - he because he was desperate, she because her conscience wouldn't allow her to. But perhaps, she wondered lying back down again, it was more than that. Both of them had been alone until they were thrown together by circumstance. Maybe, just maybe, they had both secretly wanted to not be alone anymore. After all, she hadn't supplied him and sent him away even though it meant risking her life for someone who made her uncomfortable. And he had asked her why, in the end, instead of leaving because he didn't understand her.

He was a braver person than she because he’d faced his uncertainties while she hid from hers.

So where did that leave them? They were still strangers living under one roof. Had anything truly changed between them?

The answer to that came when Hunith blinked open her eyes in the morning, and realized she'd fallen asleep without having to count a single sheep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anyone gets upset with me going "25 is still young!", that's a modern perspective. In the middle ages life was "nasty, brutish, and short" and the average life expectancy for peasants was about 30 because of disease, starvation, and war. Disney Princess age (16ish) was considered an optimal time to get married because you never knew what the future would bring.
> 
> I know Morgana and Gwen were in their twenties, but that's city life versus country life. They didn't face starvation, the citadel (supposedly) protected them from the effects of war, and their proximity to the best physician in the land gave them better odds in the disease department. The possibility of premature death wasn't on their minds (occasionally being put in moments of danger is different than just living with the constant threat of death), so they weren't in a hurry to settle down.


	3. 0x03 - Getting to Know You

After that first late night talk, everything and nothing changed between her and the man calling himself Keith. It wasn't that they did anything differently, it was that there was a different sort of feel between the two of them. Having finished the extra bedding, Hunith spent her days for the most part doing the tasks that she never got done when it was just her, like mending old clothing or picking berries from the woods to make into preserves for the winter. Keith continued to take her place in the fields, where she wouldn't be needed until the harvest drew near.

The difference lay in the way that they didn't avoid each other's eyes and the ease with which they could speak to one another. Hunith was quickly finding out that Keith was not a very verbose person. It wasn't that he was shy, it was that he wasn't inclined to engage in idle chatter the way Hunith was. He answered questions and replied when spoken to, but it didn't seem to occur to him to initiate a conversation himself unless he had something specific to say. In that way, he was a very withdrawn person.

It only made her all the more embarrassed that he had been the one to break the silence between them.

Throughout the day they said little enough to one another, but when nightfall came they would talk late in the darkness that felt as though it hid more than it truthfully did. It was safer to only acknowledge dangerous truths about themselves when the door and windows were shut to block out the night air and the peeled eyes of their neighbours were shut in sleep. Only then could they drop the act of being nothing more than two people brought together by poor old cousin Marcus.

And it was at those times, as though a dam had been breached, she and the man calling himself Keith became acquainted with each other.

"How do you know Gaius?" he asked her, a couple nights after the first conversation that broke the ice between them. By then they had given up lying on opposite sides of the room, instead sitting side by side, burning a candle to see one another and talking in hushed whispers.

"He's my brother," Hunith said simply.

Keith looked surprised. "But he's so much older than you!"

"I was adopted." Hunith laughed. Indeed, the age difference was quite something; nearly a year ago Gaius had celebrated his fiftieth birthday when she had not yet celebrated her twenty-fifth. "My parents were taken by the plague when I was eight. An old physician couple had come to Ealdor to help with the outbreak, and they took me in. Antonius and Julia were their names and I lived with them for eight years. After they died - at the same time, from one of the diseases they were treating - I came back to Ealdor. They were Gaius's parents. Not that he lived with us - he'd gone off to pursue various studies before I was adopted, but came to visit every other year or so."

"When you say they came to Ealdor, I take it they lived elsewhere?"

"Elsewhere is a good word for it," Hunith mused, a reminiscent smile making its way to her face. Most of the pain of Antonius and Julia's passing had dulled in the nine years since it happened, leaving her with only a dull ache for the kind couple who had taken in an orphaned little peasant girl and treated her as though she were their own daughter. "On the census our house was in the capital, but we generally only used it as a base to rest and restock supplies in between rounds of the kingdom. I must have seen every tiny little village dotting the backwaters of Essetir during the years I lived with them. We never stayed anywhere very long, always called away by some plague or influenza in another village."

Something like understanding went through his eyes, "It must have been lonely, growing up always moving to new places with new people. Just as you make friends, you have to leave them behind."

Surprise flickered through her. After she returned to Ealdor and once the other villagers finally coaxed an abridged version of those years of her life out of her, the overall reaction had been one of envy. Her friends all at one point or another told her that they wished they had been able to travel the kingdom as she had. "You speak as if you know what it’s like?"

Something that might have been an attempt at a smile twisted painfully on his face, like a knot pulled too tightly, and something in his eyes closed as if shutters to the window of his soul had been drawn. "I do. I grew up moving from place to place as well."

That was the end of their conversation that night, abrupt as it was, and Hunith was left with the impression that Keith's past was not a subject to be prodded into lightly.

It was several more nights before she dared venture another question to him, and even then she stuck with what she felt would be a safe one, repeating his question back to him.

"So how did you and Gaius meet?"

He didn't speak for a minute, something that she was quickly becoming used to though she hadn't quite worked out all the idiosyncratic reasons for the delayed responses yet. In this case, though, she knew he was pondering how much to tell her. It would seem that even topics like Gaius - who she knew was alive and well - were a tricky subject where Keith was concerned.

"When the king of Camelot took up the throne," he began as if unsure he really wanted to be telling her this. Understanding of his reluctance to speak hit her with those words, and she wished she hasn't asked. "For reasons I don't want to go into, I and several representatives of my kindred and brother kindred sought an audience with him. Gaius was curious about our ways, and while we were there we often met with him to discuss academic matters."

It was an answer that begged more questions than it answered, but Hunith didn't ask. If he wanted to explain more then he would have. As it was, she steered the conversation into safer waters with, "That sounds like Gaius. Our parents were just physicians, but Gaius treasured all knowledge like diamonds. He always wanted to know the workings of everything under the sun, scientific or magical."

The relaxation of Keith's expression was palpable. "He did ask a lot of questions and was very disappointed when we didn't provide a lot of answers. But he seemed to respect that some knowledge cannot be shared with outsiders and never pushed in areas where we made it clear no answers would be forthcoming."

A thin note of amusement crept into his voice, "He was rather like you in that respect." Hunith blinked in surprise, and he went on, "You haven't even asked me what my name is."

"I guess it's something we learned from our parents. When you care for all manner of people for all manner of hurts, you need to gain an extra sense for where questions are not wanted."

Keith didn't respond right away, his expression pulling into itself in the flickering candlelight. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, but it seemed to be a weighty matter for he was silent a good long while. She waited for him to resolve whatever inner debate he was having with himself.

At length he said, rather abruptly, "My name is Balinor."

"Oh," she said, too shocked to say anything else. She had no idea what she’d said to make him decide to share this. Still, her chest warmed at the unexpected gesture of trust and suddenly he felt a lot closer to her. He was now the only one of the people Gaius sent to her who she knew the name of. Somehow, she felt as though that made him more hers. "I see… may I – may I call you that, when we're alone together?"

He agreed, and though he was still shrouded in his mysterious past she felt much closer to his present self than before.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

During the day things began to slowly change. At first she didn't notice, but little things got done to make her life easier than it had ever been. The floor was always clean, even when she hadn't swept that day or the day before, dishes were washed without her having to do so, her bedroll rolled up neatly in the morning where she had left it rumpled while she went to make breakfast. Balinor never said anything about it and she never saw him doing any of it, but he was really the only explanation.

She sometimes wondered about the wisdom of using magic – which was the only explanation – to clean in the times they were living in, but reasoned as long as he did it within their home leaving no one the wiser it did no harm. On the contrary, between him taking her place in the fields and the little pieces of housework being done mysteriously, Hunith had more free time than she ever had before.

It gave them more time in the evenings, which they filled with words even before the sun had dipped below the horizon. Evenings were steadily becoming Hunith's favourite time of day, as they learned more about each other while the sun made its descent and lay down to sleep for the night.

On an evening after Balinor had seen her caring for a colicky infant and discovered she was acting as the go-to woman for all of Ealdor's ills and injuries, he asked her,

"Were your parents the ones to teach you medicine?"

"I wouldn't say they taught me, per se. It's just that there's no way you can be raised by a couple of physicians and not pick up something of healing."

He was quiet after that, then said, "My parents were my teachers, too."

Her eyes widened. This was the first time he had mentioned anyone from his past other than Gaius. Excitement and nervousness churned within in her, and she prayed she wouldn't say anything to mess this up. "Teachers of magic?"

"They taught me everything their parents taught them," he answered and didn't answer, because she didn't know quite what he was talking about, only that he was telling her more about himself now than he had in the two weeks since they had started talking to each other. She drank in every word, savouring them even when she didn't understand. "And their parents before them. It was our way of life, and magic was a part of it, but it was so much more than that."

 _Was_.

The past tense did not pass her by unnoticed. She debated with herself for a minute, but did not remark on it.

He continued, "We didn't truly have anywhere to call home. Not many places were welcoming to our kin, and so we were always on the move. Sometimes we had to leave quite suddenly, sometimes we were allowed to leave in our own time, but everywhere made it clear in one way or another that we were not welcome to stay."

"People fear what they don't understand," she offered, unsure if it was the right thing to say but nothing more appropriate came to mind.

"I know," he said bitterly. The bitterness was not directed at her, but it stung nonetheless. "Believe me, I know."

The next evening they only spoke about her, about various places she'd been and people she'd met while traveling with her adoptive parents, and no mention of Balinor's parents was made. On the evening afterwards, she steeled herself to ask,

"Could you show me?" When he looked at her in confusion, she expanded, "Something magical."

He smiled, looking the happiest he had since she'd met him, and whispered something to the candle. The flame rose in the air so that it was nearly a foot tall, and then shot downwards into a bulb at the base of the wick, flaring a white-blue then disappearing. The room was only dark for a moment, with a muttered word the candle relit with a normal flame.

Balinor's hand was by the candle, and he held out a flower that had not been there before to her. It was a white violet, the outer rim coloured a blue lighter than she had seen on the plant naturally. It was the same blue and white as the flame had been, and Hunith could not have stopped the smile spreading across her face if she wanted to.

Tenderly, he leaned over and tucked the flower behind her ear. His fingers brushed against the side of her face, and she felt her cheeks warm. She hoped he couldn't see it in the poorly lit room.

"It's beautiful," she mumbled. "It's a wonderful gift. Thank you."

"It suits you," he said, his eyes wide as though he was drinking in the sight of her. Her face burned as if the flame-flower had ignited a fire beneath her skin.

Before she went to bed, she pressed the flower within the pages of a heavy book Antonius had given her for her twelfth birthday. When she woke up, there was another one waiting for her on the table. Balinor didn't say anything when she tucked it into her headscarf, but she thought she saw a smile ghost its way across his face before his head away from her. Every day after that, when she woke there would be a new flower waiting for her. Sometimes it was a daisy, some days it was a rose, and some days it was a flower she'd never seen before which she knew didn't grow in Essetir. But the flowers were always white with a ring of blue along the edge.

Her friends looked enviously at the flowers, and didn't understand her secretive smile when she said they were a gift from "Keith".

At the end of the day she pressed the flowers into the pages of her book, determined to keep every last one. She wished she had a skill to reciprocate the kind gestures, and she was filled with a burning desire to get to know her quietly thoughtful man better.

But Hunith was hesitant to ask personal questions of Balinor, not wanting to dig up more painful memories. After all, even her innocent question about Gaius apparently turned out to have a painful story behind it. She could never tell what was a safe topic to ask him about and what had a gaping wound hiding behind the shroud of his past.

Instead, one night after telling him a story of a backwater mountain hamlet she had been to when she was thirteen to help with a pox outbreak, she ventured to ask,

"Have you ever seen the mountains?"

"Many different mountains," he said, unaffected by the question. "Some of them hundreds of leagues apart."

His relaxed manner gave her the courage to delve deeper. "What were they like?"

"The Dartry Mountains across the Seas of Meredor are probably the most distinctive I've seen."

His eyes took on a faraway look as though he was seeing them as he described, "Great pillars of rock rising out of sloping green plains, they have no peak, instead spreading out smoothly for leagues. They rise from the ground like the battlements of a castle, but only sturdy patches of green live atop their walls. Standing on the top, it’s like a platform meant for the gods; you feel tiny as you look out on the spread of the land from the snaking blue rivers to the lush deep green of the forests and lighter cheery green of the meadows, and at your back is nothing but the wind. Behind you the flat top of the mountain stretches for leagues, and it’s a feeling of such isolation to see all the land and yet not see a soul anywhere in it."

And so on as he told her of places so far away she had never heard of them. To Hunith, leaving Essetir visit Gaius in the neighbouring kingdom had been a grand adventure, but Balinor's tales made it look like a trip to the Saturday market. His tales of these places, as riveting as a bard's, became a nightly occurrence and she always listened to them eagerly. He had a cadence to his deep voice that caught the imagination, so that it was easy from just his words to smell the spices of the Southrons, or feel the bite of the cold winds of Ismere.

She knew he was leaving a lot out of his tales, such as what he did while in these places, why his parents disappeared in the more recent stories, or who the mysterious "member of my kin" accompanying them (and later him alone) was, as well as the reason behind his extensive journeys. But though she wanted to she did not ask, instead waited for him to volunteer whatever personal information he was comfortable with himself. After a week her patience paid off.

They hadn't been talking about his journeys for once, rather Hunith had been telling him what it was like coming back to Ealdor after her years on the move and the difficulties she'd had readjusting to the life in the village of her birth.

"The people were really good about it all," she was saying. "They'd taken up my parents' portion of the fields years before, of course - who'd let good farmland lie untouched? - but our house was still empty and they let me claim it, even though as a woman I'm not technically supposed to inherit any land. So it's not that they weren't good to me – because they were – it's just that I was the only one who hadn't spent the last eight years living together with everyone else. I'd be sitting in a group, wondering why everyone started laughing at the words "Judith and turnips!" Eventually I heard every piece of gossip-worthy news from the years I missed, but it's different than being there in person."

"I know what you mean," Balinor said wryly. "I wonder sometimes if the others forget I don't already know their whole life stories. Keeping track of their names is difficult enough, and they expect me to remember how everyone is related to the fifth degree."

"Everyone knows everything about everyone else in a village this size," she chuckled. "I'm just surprised you managed to get them to stop asking questions so easily. When I first came back, everyone pestered me about every tiny detail of my life while I was away until Gaius came to see how I was coping. I swear his eyebrow is magic, there's no way raising it could have got Old Ann to leave me in peace otherwise."

Unexpectedly, Balinor frowned, "What do you mean, how you were coping?"

"With our parents' deaths. He had to leave right after the funeral – I can't remember why, there was something he needed to do back in Camelot – so we didn't get much chance to talk then. I told him I was moving back to Ealdor, and he said once he finished up his business he'd come check on how I was doing. He wasn't too pleased when he found a gossipy old crone interrogating me about them."

"You're too nice for your own good," Balinor said, looking more upset than she thought he would be by such an inconsequential little story. "You should have just told them to leave you be."

She didn't know what to say to that. It was true that she often lacked the heart to reprimand others – unless they were bothering people she cared about. When she was ten she'd given a grown man twice her size a tongue lashing that left him near tears because he'd been upsetting one of Julia's patients, a bubbly girl her age who she'd instantly made friends with. But when it was just her, especially in her younger years before she grew into independence from years of taking care of herself, it seemed better to stand down.

At length, she tried to right the conversation from the strange turn it had taken. "Well, it did no one any harm in the long term, and I'm old gossip by now. And it's all years in the past, it doesn't hurt to talk about them anymore."

"But the hurt of losing someone never truly goes away, only goes to sleep," He said softly. By way of explanation, he continued, "My parents died five years ago."

She was taken aback that he was bringing this up, even though she had been hoping he would feel comfortable enough with her to share some of his past. She was further surprised when he continued speaking, not just leaving it at the little factoid.

"Their names were Palance and Danu. They were killed at night while trying to defend a young member of our kin from angry shepherds, pierced by arrows near their chests. I was leagues away, but their dying cries reached me. Magic can be a curse as well as a gift."

The candle flickered, the glow dancing across his visage in a bath of orange and shadow. It had burned low on its wick by then, and soon it would go out. The shadows lengthened.

"I miss them but, sometimes I find myself thinking... isn't it better that they died then?" His expression was complicated and Hunith couldn't hope to name the emotion thick in his voice. "They died before the world went to hell, and all of our kind were slaughtered... sometimes I think they were lucky, to not have seen it."

There was little Hunith could say in reply to that, so she only took his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze. Neither of them moved away from each other that night, and when the sun peaked over the horizon it found them huddled together against the wall, holding hands and fast asleep leaning on each other.

After experiencing the uncomfortable cricks in their necks all day from falling asleep in that position, Hunith suggested moving their bedrolls to the same side of the room so they didn't have to sit up when they talked. Balinor agreed right away, surprising her at how quickly he did so especially given the light flush on his features when she suggested it. So they lay two feet apart from each other as they carried on their hushed late night conversations, falling asleep side-by-side. Balinor breaths beside her in the dark brought comfort now, and she had a hard time imagining that once she had been kept up merely by his presence on the other side of the room.

On a day after a child had accidentally slashed her hand when cutting vegetables for her mother, their heart-to-hearts for the first time exited the cloak of falling darkness and took place under the rising light of the sun. Hunith had just sent the little girl out, with expertly bandaged hands and reassuring words, a small wistful smile on her lips the way it always was when she saw little ones, when Balinor spoke.

"You'll make a wonderful mother."

Hunith's heart felt a dull pang, despite her frequent reassurances to herself that she had accepted her lot in life. "I'd like to think I would, if I had had the chance."

Balinor's eyebrows creased and he focused his dark eyes on her in his intense way that once, before she’d become used to him, she would have been discomforted by. "You still might."

Hunith forced a little laugh. "I'm twenty-five." She said, trying to sound lighthearted. "And unwed and likely to stay that way."

Balinor took a seat at the table beside her, where she was cutting vegetables for their supper that night. His eyes bore into her like he could see her soul. "You're also beautiful."

Hunith's heart skipped a beat, a vivid flush making its way across her face. Though when she had first moved back to Ealdor and before she had revealed her literacy she had attracted some looks from the young men, no one other than her parents - both natural and adoptive - had ever outright called her beautiful. "Thank you. But there are younger girls who are prettier than me," she refuted, her smile a little shaky.

"You're kinder than anyone I've met," Balinor insisted. "Any man would be happy to have you."

Hunith laughed a little, not sure how else to respond. Balinor was still staring intensely at her, and she met his eyes, unable to look away. Unbidden, her old thoughts about how there was an undercurrent hidden in his eyes that could suck her in and carry her off resurfaced, yet the thrill it sent through her wasn't the fear that it had been before. It felt like she was being swept away then, only it wasn't terror that quickened her pulse and made her unable to think. She didn't know what to name the feeling.

Then he was leaning forwards and she, as though drawn to him, was leaning forwards as well...

A knock at the door made them both jump, and they leap to their feet like startled deer. "Who is it?" Hunith called, her voice wavering as rational thought returned. What they had been about to do and why was her heart racing when she had been sitting for hours?

It was the little girl's mother, come to bring her thanks and a bowl of berries as payment. After the woman left, Hunith went back to cutting vegetables, stubbornly ignoring Balinor. She refused to meet his gaze, which she could feel.

The next few days were as silent as when Hunith and Balinor had been strangers sharing a house. Again he was constantly looking at her, this time making no attempt to pretend that he wasn't. The feel of his gaze made her heart race and sent shivers done her arms, and Hunith became unnaturally clumsy in his presence. Her cheeks were a constant flush whenever he was around, and several of her neighbours had asked if she was feeling unwell with a knowing smirk.

Things might have continued in that awkward, strained silence of avoidance, had the next Monday not come to pass the way it did.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

The day started as it always did. She and Balinor rose at the break of dawn, and ate pottage made from leftovers from the day before. He pretended to find her cooking edible, and she in turn pretended that she didn't notice he was pretending. The same as the last few days, she stubbornly refused to look at Balinor. Soon he left, without a word, and she set about her morning chores.

She was bringing the bucket of milk and basket of eggs inside when she heard the hoofsteps approaching. Hunith hurried to leave them on the table and darted out again, not the only woman emerging from her house and looking around. Riding down the path into the village was a lone figure clad in gleaming silver armour and - to Hunith's utter horror - a billowing blood red cape. The man reigned his horse in, addressing the gathered women and elders from the centre of the village.

Without dismounting, the man announced, "People of the kingdom of Essetir, we have reason to believe that a dangerous fugitive from our kingdom fled in this direction. A tall man of black hair and brown eyes, with high cheekbones and a deep voice, aged twenty-three. He goes by the name Balinor, and escaped from us two months passed. Anyone who provides information which aids in the apprehension of this man will be richly rewarded by His Majesty Uther Pendragon, King of Camelot."

Excited murmurs broke out through the crowd of gathered women. Hunith shrunk to the back, hoping the knight could not see her face. She felt as though she might faint.

The knight appeared to have said all that he needed to, for he turned his horse around and left. As the hoofbeats faded into the distance, one of Hunith's friends made her way to her, face tight in worry. Shifting her toddler to one arm, she reached out the other to place a hand on Hunith's forehead. "Are you alright? You look as pale as a ghost."

"I- I'm fine," Hunith balled her hands into fists, fingernails pinching her skin as a painful distraction. Mentally scolding herself, she took a deep breath and envisioned herself as she was, and then clad that self in armour until she was more unassailable than the knight who had brought her such distress. "I didn't sleep well last night, is all."

"Hmm." her friend said, looking not quite convinced but unwilling to push the matter. "Well, if you say so."

Hunith gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile in response, and turned to go home, forcing herself to walk in steps that were unhurried. Scraps of excited conversations leaped out at her.

"... how much this king will pay for..."

"...Camelot. Has to be a sorcerer..."

"...frightening to think, what if he..."

"...what do you think he did..."

"...don't want one of them here..."

"...can't trust anyone..."

"...could be passing him on the byway and..."

Hunith shut her door, even though she normally left it open in the summer to let in as much light as possible. She leaned against the frame a moment, her head tilted up and eyes staring listlessly at the ceiling. She could hear the distant sounds of village wife gossip in the streets. What would she do, if one of the women realized that it was two months ago that Hunith took in a man they had never heard of before, for as paltry a reason as kindness done to a second cousin no one knew she had? Or if when they told their husbands around the dinner table about the hunted man, and their husbands realized that a man of that description worked the fields alongside them everyday? Or - heaven forbid - what if the knight went out to the fields to inform the men...

How much did this knight truly know about the man he was hunting? Had Uther sent someone who knew his face?

Trembling, Hunith grabbed a bucket to fetch water - any excuse to leave this house, to meander her way to the fields, to see he was still there and perhaps warn him...

The river they fetched water from ran parallel to the fields. Most of the time she fetched water just outside the village entrance, but now she wandered over to the area by the fields. There he was, stooping down with the other men to ready the fields for the fast approaching harvest. Soon she and the other women would join them in those fields, to bring in the crop as quickly as possible. He looked up when he saw her, eyes crinkling in the small smile that made her heart skip a beat. All worries were chased from her mind; she couldn't think, her head felt light enough to soar through the clouds.

He was fine. The knight had ridden off without stopping by the fields. And why should he? There were dozens of little villages dotting the border he needed to get to, and she couldn't imagine Cenred had given a knight of Camelot a long period to stay within his borders, if the trip had been sanctioned at all. _Balinor_ , she whispered to herself, savouring the sound of the secret name on her tongue and thinking how wrong it had sounded coming from the knight - had passed undetected. He was still here, with her, and the profound relief that knowledge gave her was frightening in its depth.

She could no longer deny it to herself.

With every passing day spent together, she was slowly but surely falling for this man whose past was still mostly a mystery but whose present belonged to her just as she belonged with him. Two months ago she hadn't known he existed, and now she couldn't imagine her life without him.

And seeing the gentleness in his warm eyes she could no longer pretend that she didn't know he felt the same way towards her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from a ridiculously catchy song of the same name from the musical The King and I (which is, nicely put, about as historically accurate Disney's Pocahontas). I thought of it while writing this chapter and the lyrics fit surprisingly well.
> 
> Antonius and Julia's names come from Marcus Antonius Creticus and Julia Antonia, who were the parents of Mark Anthony and his brother, Gaius Antonius.
> 
> Palance's name comes from the novel The Sword of Shannara where a king by that is brothers (and enemies) with Prince Balinor Buckhannah. Danu's name comes from a Hindu goddess who is the mother of a dragon.


	4. 0x04 - Barriers Breached

"Can I help?"

Balinor looked up from the mess of leaves and branches spread out on the table before him, gesturing her to sit across from him. Hunith picked up an untouched branch and meticulously began shelling it of its leaves, as she had observed him do. He finished the branch he was shelling, then gathered up the stripped branches and cut them into hand span long slips. He gathered these pieces together and tied them into a bundle, while she provided him with more stripped branches to repeat the process over again.

"You made these last Samhain, too," she observed curiously, placing a branch into the pile awaiting bundling. "Only closer to the actual date."

"I lost track of the days and had a late start last year," Balinor replied. "It's best to allow several days for the reeds to dry out. They burn more easily that way."

"Hmm," Hunith murmured, brushing the discarded leaves into a pile with her hands before reaching for another branch. "Did these have a special meaning to your people?"

It hadn't escaped her in the last year that Balinor always used the past tense on the rare occasions he mentioned his "kin", but she did not push for further answers. She would never forget how when she had first arrived back in Ealdor a mix of well-intentioned and entertainment-seeking villagers insisted on prying into all that she'd been through since they last saw her. That the recent loss of the couple who had taken her in during the worst period of her young life and raised her as though she were their own daughter was a constant ache like a phantom limb did not seem to occur to any of those wishing to hear the tales of those years of her life. She was eternally grateful to Gaius for getting them to leave her in peace to remember the good in her own time, when the ache had dulled so that the pain of the memories was sweet as well as bitter.

She could now speak of those times with ease, and had told him everything about them. She believed that given time to heal, he would do the same.

"It's an old custom," his voice had that hushed cadence which she loved, like the crackle of hearth fires and legends being sung by a bard. It was when he spoke thus that she remembered the fine cut of his clothes when he first arrived and wondered to herself how anyone could mistake a man like this for nothing more than a simple commoner. "It's said when the veil is at its thinnest on Samhain, the spirits of the departed can see our world as though through a mist from the shores of Avalon. Each of these will carry one candle, and the candles remind our departed loved ones that they are remembered still by those who remain."

The year previous on the night of Samhain Hunith had watched the man she recently discovered she'd come to love slip silently from the village festivities, fetch six odd-looking miniature reed baskets - only big enough to hold a single apple a piece - from their home and wander into the nearby forest. She'd gone home and waited for him until the candle burned low, wondering if she should follow but unable to bring herself to. Samhain was the day of the dead, and that year the number of untimely departed was beyond count. What right had she, who knew not even the names of the victims of the tyrant's perverted revenge, to intrude on such an intensely private moment for one of the surviving wronged? When he at last slipped through her door empty-handed the moon was high up in the sky, and wordlessly they headed to their sleeping rolls.

This year, she had known him more than a few months. Gathering up her courage, she asked the question she hadn't been able to the year before, "Would it be alright if I came along?"

His eyes crinkled with his smile, as the fire light dancing in them warmly. He looked as if he knew how long she had debated with herself over whether that was the right thing to say - her desire to comfort him at war with her desire to not broach potentially painful topics. As the months went on and a year passed since their meeting, the former desire grew stronger and stronger until it overrode the latter. She wanted to help him, even though the cure for a broken heart was beyond her knowledge. She couldn't bear the thought of him facing all the ghosts of the dead alone.

He took her hand, stilling it from the absentminded leaf pealing. The feel of his calloused fingers wrapped around hers still brought warmth to her cheeks. His hand perfectly covered hers like they were meant to be together. "Please."

She returned his smile.

Together, they continued making the reed bundles in the relaxed silence of two people at home with each other.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Not since she had been a young child impatiently counting the days to festival night had Hunith in the days preceding Samhain been so aware of the coming celebration of the dead. Like a beacon signalling the passing days the bundle of reeds lay against her windowsill, their daily changing state a constant reminder of what was to come. They dried, were dipped in pine tar, dried again, were woven into a dug-out shape, and tarred again. The six baskets sat on her windowsill, waiting for the remaining days to pass.

Her friends in the village were not pleased when she told them she would not be coming to the community bonfire.

"But it would be your first time roasting nuts on the hearth!" Betrys protested each time they saw one another. "And I have a bet with Catrin about the shape of your egg whites!"

Hunith always gave a strained smile, ignoring several more attempts to tempt her with the lures of the night, and replied that she and "Keith" wanted to hold a private ceremony for "cousin Marcus". Her friends were never satisfied with that response, and she thanked her lucky stars they would be too preoccupied on the night itself to bother her. Ever since "Keith" had first arrived Hunith had been subjected to nudges and giggles from her friends, who were all married with children. When she and "Keith" had openly entered a relationship, the attention became smothering. She suspected that it was not pure happiness for a friend that drove them - years away from the romance of courtship themselves, they were living somewhat vivaciously through their one untied down friend in her first love.

Nevertheless, her friends had children to mind and families to be with the night of the festival, so she was confident they would not try to waylay or follow her.

The morning of, Balinor pored a small pool of wax in each basket. She carefully stood a slender white candle in the center of each pool, and then they went about their daily tasks as the wax dried. When the sun dipped below the horizon and the other villagers began to congregate in the street, she and he gathered the baskets and walked out into the growing dark.

The forest of Essetir had been her playplace as a child, but in the falling light the dark shadows seemed sinister, alive even. This was the night the spirits roamed, yet she'd never believed that so fully as she did then, walking along a path she could barely see while to all sides of her was the whispering of the bush. A strange animal call from her immediate right startled her, and she jolted away from the foliage.

"Leoht," Balinor whispered, and a tiny flame was cupped in the palm of the hand nearest her. The flickery orange glow did not illuminate much beyond him and her, but just its presence in the hands of her beloved made her feel safe.

The half-moon was peaking over the tree tops when they stopped. The gurgle of water she could hear in front of them was thrown into visible relief by the cupped flame. Judging by the breadth of the stream, it was the River of Essetir, the largest body of water near Ealdor.

Balinor set the baskets he held in the long grass of the bank, and she bent down to do the same. The brittle dying fall grass tickled her cheeks, and all around her - unseen - was a chorus of insects with the occasional bullfrog solo. He laid the baskets out in a circle in front of them, and raising his hands above the middle intoned,

"þrēo biþ ān. Mægþ ond ácennicge ond ealdcw." Like painted by an invisible brush, three symmetrical swirls spun outwards from the central candle of each basket. "Ān béo þrēo." In the free space between each swirl grew an identical design, overlaid with the first so that six swirls grew out from the center.

"The Double Triskelion is the symbol of my kin," he explained softly. "Two peoples connected as one, each composed of three clans."

Placing his hands on one of the baskets, he intoned, "Gewritu Azi," and then moved his hand to the next, continuing and touching each basket one after another, "Gewritu Taninim. Gewritu Luhng. Gewritu Charmicael. Gewritu Menion. Gewritu Numinor."

He removed his hands, and runes encircled the rims of the baskets, different combinations on each one. Hunith could only read Common, so not knowing their meanings she could only observe the design itself. The runes were composed entirely of straight lines, no curves to be seen, which bent or met smaller lines to compose shapes that held a simple elegance to them.

"The runes mark the name of each clan," Balinor explained. "My people's clans were Charmicael, Menion, and Numinor. My brother kindred's clans were Azi, Taninim, and Luhng. There's one basket for each clan."

He extinguished the flame in his hand and with a whispered word of magic, the candle of the basket closest to the river flickered alight. Balinor held it up to the night sky, "A light for the clan of Charmicael. May it comfort them to know they are not forgotten by those who remain."

Placing the burning basket gently in the water, he removed his hands and let the current take the tiny winking light away. "May it reach from these shores to the shores of Avalon, bringing peace to those whom the veil divides. May this light reach the dearly departed of Charmicael: Allanon, Tarhunt, Hattusa, Hendel, Tyrsis, Dayel, Panamon, Brona, Shirlin, Ari, Atalanta, Moloth, Entia, Rednal, Kirisin, Erisha, Ailie, Simralyn, Arlen, Catalya, Meike, Tragen, Basselin, Frae, Terek, Kael, Tanekil, Evren, Ymugi, and Kylie."

He repeated this ritual with each basket, sending them down the river one by one accompanied by the names of the dead and a prayer for peace. Hunith felt a lump grow in her throat with each name. She'd known that Balinor had lost many loved ones in the Purge, but she hadn't quite grasped just how many until now, crouched by his side in the dark listening to the seemingly endless strings of names which now were nothing but the memories of one man and a tiny candle burning one night a year.

Some of the baskets carried more names, and some less. Some of the names sounded like they belonged in a bard's song rather than as a person's name - majestic, powerful names like "Kilgharrah" or "Nidhoggr" or "Illuyanka". Hunith wondered what the people they had belonged to were like, whether if she'd seen them in person such grand names would have suited their appearance. She tried to imagine them, these people Balinor had loved and lost, but it was like grasping in the dark.

At long last he placed the last basket in the water, concluding his speech with the final list of names, "...Teshub, Fafnir, Zimej, Puruli, Ahi, Vritra, Yggdrasil, Naga, Landvaettur, Yilbegan, Kulshedra, and Ejderha."

As the current carried away the last candle boat as it had the others, he uttered what sounded like a prayer, "Grið fæstne mid þisse tintregian sawle."

They sat there in silence for a moment, watching the small light become progressively smaller, until they couldn't see it in the distance. Hunith reached for Balinor's hand, giving it a comforting squeeze - an insufficient gesture in comparison to the long list of names which together made up around the number of people who lived in Ealdor. Hunith had suffered the loss of her parents - twice, counting her adopted parents as well as her natural - and she couldn't imagine how she could have continued on if it were not just them, but all of Ealdor that was struck down with the plagues which had claimed their lives. What would she have done if she was left truly alone in the world, with everyone she loved dead at the hands of a grief-driven madman?

"Thank you for being here," his low voice broke the stillness of the night. "They would have liked you, if you'd met."

What could she say in response? "I'm sure I would have liked them as well."

He didn't reply for a moment, then said in an unexpectedly wry voice, "You know, you never ask questions. A stranger turns up at your door and you take him in, fabricated life-story notwithstanding. A few months later said stranger makes misshapen reed boats, disappears into the night with them and reappears at an ungodly hour empty-handed with no explanation, and you don't say a word. Even tonight, you never once asked me where we were going or what we would be doing once we got there."

"I find it makes life feel more worth-while to decide to trust in the good intentions of others unless they prove to be unworthy of that trust," Hunith said simply. Sometimes it was harder to keep to that decision - that awful first week of living together came to mind - but if she couldn't help her feelings she could at least help the way she acted on them. "And after all this time I know the kind of man you are. One day, I know you'll tell me everything, when you're ready."

"What if I'm ready now?" he put an arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to him, so that they were leaning against each other on the riverbed. "I've never known anyone like you, Hunith. You're the most selfless, kind person I've ever met. I can't imagine what would have become of me if Gaius had directed me to another's doorstep - I lost everything, but now I have a new life, here with you. It'll never be like the one I lost... but I'm happy, when I didn't think I ever could be again. And all because you shared everything you have with me - your home, your food, even your heart. I want to do the same. No more secrets."

Hunith's heart was beating fast. "So then... questions..." She knew next to nothing about Balinor's past. She knew of the places he'd been, and he'd told her about his parents, but anything more recent or sensitive they hadn't treaded on yet. To her, it was almost as if his life began the day he turned up at her house and gave her a fright. Before then was veiled in a mysterious shroud so heavy she wasn't sure how to begin to lift it. Her mouth felt dry as she admitted, "What if I don't know what to ask?"

"Then I'll begin, and you can ask as I go."

The moon rose high overhead as he told her of dragons and their lords, of soul brothers who could speak without words and call to one another no matter how many leagues lay between them. He spoke in his mesmerizing way that brought life to mere words, and she interrupted only rarely with the briefest of questions. She learned of the decline of a mighty race, brought to the brink of extinction by the ignorance of man, and how their kindred clans strove to garner an understanding between the two people only to be repudiated themselves. She learned at last the reason for his journeys since childhood - his parents had been searching the known world since before he was born to find a place that would accept both the dragonlords and the dragons, only to be disappointed time after time as the fear of the unknown stopped people from welcoming powerful creatures of magic into their midst.

That had been the purpose of his trip to Camelot upon Uther's enthronement, which he vaguely told her about in their earlier days. The eldest member of each of the six clans, which included him since his parents had recently been killed protecting a young dragon from shepherds who believed it to be preying on their flocks, had gone to offer tribute to the new king, hoping to build goodwill with him that might someday bring their people peace.

Of course, all their hopes were to be dashed by the occurrence of the Purge. Due to their social isolation, they'd first heard rumour of the war against magic several months after it began, and immediately the six clans had gathered at the breeding grounds to discuss what they should do. Balinor and the elder of the Taninim clan, Kilgharrah, were sent off to seek news. While they were gone an unimaginable tragedy occurred: a force of Camelot's knights found the breeding grounds through means Balinor was unsure of and slaughtered those who were gathered there, smashing even the unborn eggs in their nests. Only a few older children of the dragonlords were spared, captured and taken to Camelot to be tortured for information.

Balinor and Kilgharrah felt the dying screams and in sorrowful anger threw caution to the wind. Balinor commanded the dragon to stay outside the city, not wanting to involve the townspeople in the conflict. Then he forced his way into the citadel, bursting into Uther's throne room with all obstacles thrown out of the way of his unexpected intrusion. He demanded to know why they had been attacked unprovoked.

The king of Camelot acted shocked, and assured Balinor that his grievances lay with the High Priestess Nimueh and he had given no orders regarding the dragons. He told Balinor his war was solely against those who supported the Priestesshood of the Isle of the Blessed, which had proven itself to be an enemy of Camelot with the assassination of his queen. He said that for the most part rumours of his witch-hunts were exaggerated versions of his hunt for supporters of Nimueh, though it was true that sometimes his men in ignorance of the differing groups among the Old Religion misunderstood his orders as a blanket sentence on all who practiced magic, and that that must have been what happened with the dragons.

As the king pleaded his ignorance and assured Balinor it was all a horrible misunderstanding, that he would punish those responsible and release Balinor's people - who he claimed had been brought to him as supporters of Nimueh - he seemed so sincerely distraught that Balinor believed him. The king asked for Balinor to call the dragon, so he could explain and ask clemency for his people from his rage, begging him to let no more innocent blood be shed in ignorance. He said once the dragon was calmed he would release the captured children of the dragonlords if they swore they would not seek revenge against his people for the grievous wrong that had been done to them. He told Balinor that nothing could make up for what had happened, but they had an obligation to save the living, not seek revenge for the dead.

So Balinor had called the dragon under the cover of night, not wanting to alarm the city with the sight of it, believing he was bringing an end to the bloodshed and earning the release of the captive children. It was not to be, for he had been deceived, and those he hoped to save were killed that night. For his "aid" he was granted one night to make his peace with his death, and would be publicly executed in the morning.

He told her of Gaius's part in his escape, and how he had fled from Camelot with nothing but the vague promise Ealdor offered.

It was a tale of heartbreak and betrayal, culminating in the luring false promises of a dishonest king that brought everything to an end in the most tragic way imaginable. She held him close as he spoke, offering her support in the only way she knew how. Words were too paltry to express her horror and sympathy for what he had been through.

When all had been said and no secret lay between them they did not move, sitting together in the dark listening to the calls of the night intermixed with the hum of the river. The low rush of running water was soothing, like a balm to the hurts of the heart. Her heavy emotions drained from her as though the mere sound washed them away, until all that she could feel was the peace of the night air and the ever steady flow of the river.

Pressed close as they were, she could feel him reaching into the pocket of his jacket.

"Here," he pressed something roughly the size of an a chicken's egg into her palm. "I made this for you."

The back lay smooth against her palm, the texture of unpolished wood on the sensitive skin there, and a leather chord came off it near her thumb. She ran the pads of her fingers experimentally along the front, taking in the grooves there, cut deliberately and smoothed so her touch did not result in slivers. The surface rose and fell in a pattern of even bumps like the skin of a snake. The shape began small at the top and then widened into two symmetrical ridged semi-circles which formed a shape unmistakeable as anything but that of a pair of spread wings. The bottom narrowed into a spiked tail, curling up on itself in a loop.

Knowing what she now knew of his past, it was easy to tell that it was a dragon. "Thank you."

He lifted it from her palm and hung the chord around her neck, his fingertips brushing her face clumsily in the dark. The wooden token hung about her chest, the weight great enough to be noticed but not so heavy that it would bring her discomfort. She ran her fingers along the gift, marvelling at how well-made it felt. It meant more to her than she could express in words that he had given her the image of his very heart, something so deeply personal it felt as though a piece of him was resting against her breast.

So she chose not to express it in words.

She didn't have to lean far to connect their lips.

The kiss was slow and sweet; after all, everything lying between them had been stripped away and this was their true beginning. They had all the time in the world. Her arms drifted around his chest, and his hand rose to the nape of her neck, pulling her in closer. When at last she pulled away to breath their embrace didn't end. Rather, his body followed hers, and as though they had both planned to they found themselves lying together in the grass, still holding one another.

The scratch of dry grass against her exposed skin was barely noticeable in the all-consuming heat migrating from her innards to every fiber of her body, keeping at bay even the chill of the autumn night air. Her heart thrumming in her ears drowned out the muted sounds of the night when his lips found hers again. She closed her eyes, and lost herself in the bliss that was him and her, gently exploring each other with every barrier between them slowly slipping away, until there was nothing left separating him from her as they came together.

The moon continued on its journey through the night sky, but they remained by the river side. When the moon disappeared under the horizon and the first rays of the sun rose in its place, they were still there, two entwined bodies holding each other where they lay.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

The sunny November day shone over the citadel of Camelot with unseasonal warmth, entering through the throne room windows with a cheery yellow glow. Gaius could not appreciate the fine day, however, because of the words of the peasant boy kneeling before Uther's throne. Up on the dais, Uther leaned forwards, looking truly interested in the peasant's story for the first time.

"You are certain of this?"

The boy nodded eagerly, "Yes, Your Highness." A charred reed basket was deceptively innocently between them on the red carpeted floor, laid out by the peasant in front of the king's throne as evidence. "This was the last of them; the other ones were swept away by the current before we could haul them in."

"Gaius," Uther motioned him forwards. Reluctantly Gaius went, his heart sinking to his dragging feet as the peasant boy handed him the damning bundle of reeds. He turned the basket slowly, taking as long as he dared to examine it while he fruitlessly searched his mind for a way out of this situation. Meanwhile, the boy continued talking,

"My friends and I saw them go by last year on the River of Essetir, but the current is so fast we didn't dare go in after them in the dark. They gave my little sister nightmares for weeks - she thought the Villia were angry with our village - so this year we brought a rope, and tied it around my friend's waist when he went in, and..."

"Yes, thank you," Uther cut him off, "your loyal assistance in the fight against magic will not go unrewarded." He nodded to his chief of staff, who stepped forwards to escort the boy out the room and - presumably - fetch the customary number of gold coins given to those who reported magical incidents. With the boy no longer providing a distraction, the eyes of the entire court rested on Gaius's bent head. "Well, Gaius? What can you tell us about these markings?"

He turned the basket over to try and buy himself more time, but he keenly felt each second the impatient silence stretched on. The idea of deflecting the attention by saying he needed to consult his books flitted through his mind, but ultimately it would do no good. Uther had seen this mark only a little more than a year ago, and if he didn't remember its significance then one of the other members of the court surely would. Gaius would be doing no one any favours by evading answering. Resisting the powerful urge to swallow, Gaius made his voice perfectly even when he said, "The mark it bears is a Double Triskelion, sire."

Uther's hand curled into a fist, resting on the hard lacquered rosewood arm of his throne. Gaius hastily added, "We do not know for sure who made this. The symbol itself is easy to replicate. It may be a hoax, sire."

"We cannot take the chance that it isn’t." Turning to the first knight, Sir Cleges, Uther ordered, "Dispatch knights to scour the settlements along the river upstream from the boy's village. If you find the dragonlord, you are to kill him on sight. I want you to leave at first light. You are all dismissed."

The gathered members of the court slowly trickled out the room, leaving behind only Uther, Gaius, and one other man - Lord Gorlois, visiting Camelot to commission a supply of sleeping droughts from Gaius for his wife, Lady Vivienne, whose unrelenting night terrors ever since she'd had to surrender her healing bracelet at the start of the Purge had their manor physician tearing out his hair in frustration. Uther remained as he was on the throne, and Gorlois stepped forwards, briefly catching Gaius's eye but looking away before Gaius could make out what look he had been given. "My lord, if I may speak?"

There was a time when Gorlois had not hesitated to give Uther what was on his mind but, as happens sometimes when boys became men and assumed separate responsibilities, they’d drifted. Nevertheless, Gorlois was still the closest friend Uther had, even though he now lived leagues away and seldom made the journey to the capital unless to report to his king.

Uther nodded his assent, and Gorlois began in a voice that was trying so hard to be even that it shook. "The boy is from one of the outlying villages. Go any further up the River of Essetir and you'll be in Essetir itself. Your peace talks with Cenred are hanging by a thread; if you send troops to trespass on his lands you'll be jeopardizing all your efforts to make a treaty with him. He won't take kindly to Camelot's knights crossing the border and carrying away one of his taxpayers."

"Antagonizing Cenred is not my intention, I take no pleasure in this. It is regretful, but necessary."

Gorlois stiffened, his words sounding as though they needed to pass through a strainer before exiting his mouth. The strainer seemed to be cracking the more words rolled off his tongue, until at the end it seemed ready to burst. "Do you plan to abandon all hope of peace with Essetir? To set back everything you've done by years? To risk reigniting the fires of war - condemning _hundreds_ of your people to die - all for the sake of pursuing _one_ fugitive?"

"He practiced magic," Uther said flatly. "He is too dangerous to be allowed to live."

"His magic was in commanding dragons!" Gorlois argued hotly, all attempts at keeping calm discarded. "What dragons are left for him to command! What exactly is a dragonlord Lord of if there are no dragons? He's just a man now, stripped of all power - like a cripple! Like a defanged snake!"

"But a snake nonetheless," Uther insisted, his own admittedly short temper rising in retaliation to being questioned. "And like a snake even if the poison is gone from his bite, he can still crush his prey! I will not allow that to happen! This land will not be safe until he’s dead!"

"None of this would even be a problem if you had just honoured your word in the first place!" Gorlois exploded. "How can you speak of the corruption of magic - of how it breeds liars and cowardly killers - when you _yourself_ were content to use it, to kill no less! This dragonlord was merely a vessel - you, Uther Pendragon used magic to summon the dragon through the most underhanded, deceitful, _dishonourable_ means I have ever -"

"ENOUGH!" Uther thundered, rising from his throne and striding off the dais towards Gorlois. "I am your king, you will _show me some respect!_ "

"Then you would do well to act like one! You cannot demand no one practice magic and then employ it yourself! This man's only crime was to carry out a request that he believed you were asking _in good faith_ when all the while you planned to _stab him in the back_ like a _cowardly barbarian_! And for this - for _this_ crime you would sacrifice the lives of your own men in a war that is not the least bit necessary?"

Uther's face was twisted and nearly purple with rage, and Gaius hastily interrupted before the two men - who were supposed to be friends - could tear into each other any further. "Sire, Lord Gorlois, please, fighting amongst ourselves will not help matters."

Two pairs of heads snapped to Gaius in surprise, as though in the heat of their anger they had both forgotten he was in the room with them. Trying to placate them both into returning to the rational men he knew they could be, he said, "There is seldom an argument where only one side has merit. Sire, I understand your caution towards those who practice magic - " privately, Gaius added _even if I do not agree with it_ , and made up on the spot, " - but Gorlois is more right than either of you know; for the dragon was the source of the dragonlord's magic. With its death, the magic has been draining out of him like a punctured water-skin. By now, he is no more a sorcerer than you are."

"Loss of ability does not mean loss of intent," Uther said, but the unheedful irrationality that burned in his eyes when confronted with anything magic had dimmed. "A murderer without hands to murder is no less a murderer."

"Yet you would not start a war over a crippled murderer," Gorlois rebounded instantly. "Other sorcerers have fled across the borders and you did not pursue them. I know you witnessed what this man could do, but it is just that - what he _could_ do. He cannot do it anymore. You've taken the ability from him; you've already won. This man is beyond your reach. Let him go."

Uther was silent for a long moment, displeasure radiating from his every pore. Gaius did not doubt that their arguments had done nothing to dissuade Uther from his conviction of Balinor's guilt; in his mind, Balinor practiced magic, and therefore he must die. (That Gaius had once practised magic and was allowed to live was not something he wanted to remind Uther of if he could possibly help it.) The matter troubling Uther now was not whether or not he should kill Balinor - he wholehearted believed he should - but whether or not he should kill Balinor at the cost of fanning the flames of war between himself and Cenred.

Begrudgingly, as though he was forcing the words through his teeth, Uther called for the guards. Two identically uniformed guards walked through the door on cue, looking as bland and vacant-expressioned as they always did. Though he tried to halt such thoughts in their tracks by telling himself they were unkind, Gaius secretly wondered if the reason behind that look was the mind-numbing tedium of standing around doing nothing for hours every day, or whether only people with no other worthwhile talents were picked to stand at doors acting mostly as a deterrent.

"Send word to Sir Cleges that I've thought matters over and there's a change in orders. A search party will not be necessary." Gaius was amazed at how quickly Uther had come to see reason, but his next words sent a dart of ice through his heart. Belatedly, he thought that he should have known it wouldn't be that easy. "Instead, tell him to send for Halig, the bounty hunter. I have a commission for him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And things finally begin to change.
> 
> You have no idea how difficult it was to come up with a half-way plausible reason for why Balinor might have trusted Uther's promises. Any and all holes in the logic I blame on Balinor's grief and desperation. He wasn't thinking clearly.
> 
> Hunith's friend was referencing Samhain fortune-telling customs that predict whether a couple will stay together and how many children they'll have.
> 
> And Gorlois makes a cameo. I was going to have Gaius confront Uther, but Gaius is way too cautious to say half the things I needed him to say. So I picked Morgana's stepfather instead.
> 
> I can't remember where all the names of the dragons and dragonlords came from. Some of them are from legends about dragons, some from the novel The Unicorns of Balinor, some from The Sword of Shannara, and some are foreign words for dragons. Just don't ask me which is which.
> 
> The Old English is from an online translator. I have no idea how accurate it is. It's supposed to mean "Light", "Three is one. Past and present and future. One are three." , and "Write [clan name]" (I wasn't terribly ambitious with my spells). Then I copied the spell Merlin uses to send off Lancelot. I don't know if it actually fits, but since I know nothing about Old English its staying as it is.


	5. 0x05 - If I Stay (Part 1)

"Are you sure you don't want me to go get a physician?" Balinor asked, peering into her pale face in concern. "You've had this flu for nearly a month now."

Hunith wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her dress, ignoring the now familiar acrid after-taste of bile burning on the back of her tongue and throat. She sat down weakly at their table, shutting her eyes briefly so the world didn't lurch in a way that only further upset her stomach. She said tersely, unsure of the wisdom of having her mouth open, "The nearest town with a physician is nearly a two days walk away, and there probably won't be anything he can do for me that I can't do for myself. The herbs I have to combat nausea are from my last batch of autumn picking; they're losing their potency. I'll go pick fresh ones tomorrow."

Balinor's face was still creased in concern, and she knew this was not the last she'd hear of finding help for her. In addition to having difficulty keeping the food down, Hunith was finding it difficult to force herself to eat it in the first place. Everything tasted like it had gone off, even though Balinor assured her it tasted fine to him. It wasn't only her stomach that was a mess; little things that usually she'd shrug off sent her into sudden foul moods which baffled her more than anyone. Yet even knowing there was no reason to blackly curse Old Ann for barging in with poor excuses to snoop (well, maybe a little, but Hunith had been dealing good-naturedly with the insistent raps at her door for years), these days she seemed unable to summon the cheer she usually had for, well, everyone.

With symptoms like these, the woman raised by two physicians suspected a more likely cause for the upset in her body than a mysterious prolonged illness that only infected her out of their entire village. However, she held off voicing her diagnosis. The skimming down of food in winter meant often her cycle came late, or skipped a month if the year had been truly bad, so even that was not definitive proof. As she was vomiting up half of what she ate these days, she couldn't tell for sure cause from effect - whether the missed cycles caused the "illness" or whether the illness caused the missed cycles.

In the face of getting what she had longed for since she was a little girl singing lullabies to a straw doll, Hunith was giddy with both excitement and fear. She couldn't bear to be wrong, to raise her hopes for nothing. To admit her suspicions out loud would be like exposing them for the world to pick apart. What if it all turned out to be nothing more than her thinking what she wanted to think? Better to wait until there was no other possible explanation for her symptoms.

He placed his hand on her forehead, checking for the nth time for a non-existent fever. "Are you sure you're well enough to make the trip to the woods?"

She batted away his hand in exasperation, barely suppressing her welling unreasonable irritation. She started counting to 20, a rule she'd self-initiated after her fluctuating moods culminated in Catrin's six-year-old in tears and Hunith herself sobbing apologies as once again her inconstant emotions flipped on their head from snappishness into deep wallowing guilt. Only after she reached 20 did she say, "Yes, I'm sure."

He looked as though he was about to offer more protests, but a strange rattling noise approached, distracting them both. Hunith rose and followed Balinor to the doorway, peering into the street to see what was making the noise.

A horse-drawn wagon squeezed into the narrow dirt streets of Ealdor, barely avoiding clipping the corner of Catrin's cottage as it passed. In the front sat a fat, balding man dressed in black leather that surely warmed him better than all of Hunith's shawls combined could manage. His wagon wasn't like anything she had seen before, though admittedly her knowledge of modes of transportation other than walking was both second-hand and scarce. A heavy brown cloth lay over it like a shroud, revealing only the tall cube shape beneath.

The man stopped his strange wagon into the center of the village, pulling away the heavy curtain to reveal the frame. It was composed entirely of rough iron lattice work that formed a heavy grid pattern which made it look oddly like a giant cage. Dispelling such a grim notion was a rainbow of trinkets hanging off every bar, everything from pans to women's ornaments to children's toys.

Hunith stepped forwards to get a better look, and from the corner of her eyes she could see others doing the same all down the street. Children darted out from behind their mother's skirts, ducking around the slow moving adults as they raced over to examine the most brightly coloured section of the metal carriage. The man smiled indulgently at them, and then turned to address the adults gathering around his carriage.

"Good day, my friends," he said genially, "Do you lovely folks have any use for a humble peddler such as myself?"

Mathew, the unanimous spokesperson of the village when dealing with outsiders, stepped forwards, "I'm afraid we don't have much to trade with at this time of year, but you're welcome to stay. I'm Mathew, and you are...?"

"Halig," the man said, holding out his hand. They shook, and then he drew back and started showing his wares to the various villagers. Hunith edged towards the brightly coloured children's toys, standing to the back of the children jostling and pushing each other to get a better look. Hunith glanced back over her shoulder at Balinor, who was slipping back into their home. She could see him reaching for his thinnest carving knife and pulling something small out of his pocket, but couldn't see what. Irritation flickered through her.

For the past couple weeks he had been working on some project, but was steadfast in his refusal to show it to her. Instead he worked on it whenever she was otherwise occupied, slipping it into his pocket the moment she walked into the room. Trying to sneak up on him to see it only had him hiding it behind his back, and she wasn't sure what he did with it at night, but she could never find any half carved blocks of wood hidden away. It hurt more than she cared to admit that he was hiding something from her, especially since he usually spent the spare hours of the evenings huddled close to her for warmth, idling carving something and explaining what he was making to her as he did so. She couldn't imagine why he suddenly wanted to shut her out of one of the activities that he loved.

Hunith started counting to 20 even though she had nothing to say to anyone, and determinedly distracted herself from unwanted thoughts by refocusing on the rack of children's toys in front of her. She didn't have much money - certainly not enough to buy toys with - but she could get some ideas of what types of things children liked and make it herself. Any of the wooden toys would be easy enough for Balinor to make - if he ever got over his sudden inexplicable shyness of anyone seeing him work, that is.

Her friends one by one meandered over from the women's section to join her to the back of the children's, half-heartedly scolding their overexcited little ones and cautioning them to be mindful not to break anything. Herleva, holding little one-and-a-half-year-old Will, stood beside Hunith eyeing the toys speculatively from a distance.

"He's too young for them now," she said by way of explanation, "but it would be nice to have something for him to play with in a few years’ time."

Little cloth dolls in crisp dresses would be good for a girl, Hunith thought absentmindedly picking out the one with the prettiest eyes. Or the set of painted skittles, to play with an older child with, good for a girl or boy. The ribbon twirlers would be good even for an infant, she thought picturing herself twirling the green and yellow stripped one above a little baby with little chubby fingers and a little chubby face, who laughed and reached out towards her. The image brought a smile to her face, and she suggested the ribbons to Herleva, who went to inspect an orange and blue one, calling over Halig to ask for its price.

She didn't spend all afternoon admiring the children's toys, though they hung in her mind even as her hands went through the motions of her daily chores. Although there were no fields to tend in the winter, there were still eggs to collect and dinners to prepare and cloths to spin. This year she didn't have to chop firewood, as Balinor had volunteered to, becoming quite insistent about it in light of her taking ill. She was grateful; she doubted she could swing an axe around without sinking to her knees. Hunith was staying in their home more and more recently, and while it suited her fine to escape the cold winter air she was becoming most tired of the sight of the same walls, day after day after day. She was looking forwards to her trip to the woods.

After supper, which was much earlier in the winter than in the summer, with the days being shorter, she wandered out to see the wagon again, this time first browsing through the head-scarves and little clothing trinkets for women before she stepped over to the children's side, as though drawn there by an inescapable force. There were only a few people browsing around still, and she was able to look more closely at each item.

Halig approached her with a wide smile on his face, "Hello, miss, they tell me you're Hunith."

Hunith blinked, startled that anyone would be talking about her to him. Though his words and smile were kind enough, and his slight portliness wasn't anything fearsome, something about him made her uncomfortable. Putting back the green and yellow ribbon like a child caught in a misstep, she said, "Yes, I am... Who were you asking?"

"Oh, it was just Ann, she was telling me you lived next-door," he said with a shrug. "She offered to let me stay the night at her place. Very generous of her."

"Yes," Hunith said, biting her lip to keep from laughing. After weeks of steadily getting more and more annoyed at her nosy neighbour, it was nice to once again see the humour in her badly disguised "kindness" now that for once it was being focused on someone else.

The poor man had no idea what he was in for. When she was through pumping him for every scrap of information from the wider world, Old Ann would regale him with every minute piece of village gossip from the last half of the century. The thought of him being maneuvered into what Hunith dubbed the Interrogator's Chair - a creaky wooden thing with a threadbare cushion that Old Ann insisted her guests sit in while she fetched something to feed them, thereby using hospitality to trap them at her mercy - and his extra folds of fat sinking over the edge of the frame that was built for half-starving peasants was rather comical. "How kind of her."

"You know," he said causally, "I was wondering why a pretty young lass like you wasn't more interested in my necklaces, but the mystery is solved: I see you already have one. It's a lovely carving. Who did you buy it from?"

She glanced down at the wooden figure that she hung around her neck every day since Balinor had given it to her. Warmth filled her chest at the memory, seeping into her tone as she said, "No one, Keith made it for me."

"Oh, really? He's very good; it looks like it was done by a professional wood-carver." He picked at the thread, holding it away from her and running a finger down the dragon's spine. "What an interesting motif. Does he have an in interest in dragons, then?"

Hunith stiffened, her heart skipping a beat before she forced herself to breathe again. It was a sensible question given the necklace, she told herself; he didn't mean anything by it. Nonetheless, she felt unnerved and oddly vulnerable as Halig looked directly into her face, his eyes holding an intelligence that was too perceptive for her comfort. Forcing a calm she didn't feel into the words, she said measuredly, "I wouldn't say that. I'm sure he just liked the design."

"It is very unique," he said, still running his fingers along it and not taking his gaze away from her face. Hunith had to quell the irrational urge to yell at him to stop it, to just let go of her necklace already. "Not really what I would pick to make for a woman. Flowers, or maybe a small woodland animal, but definitely not a man-eating monster. Though things might be different where he was from; Ann did tell me he wasn't from here originally. He only came to live with you... last year, around mid-summer, wasn't it?

"Yes," her mouth had gone oddly dry and she had trouble swallowing. "Yes, that's right."

Halig smiled at her, nodding slightly. He let go of her necklace, letting it fall back against her chest. "I see. Well, I won't hold you up any longer. Please, take your time looking and let me know if you need anything."

He turned away to chat to another villager looking at his wares, but Hunith clutched her winter shawls tightly about herself, and turned on her heel hurrying back into her cottage. She wondered why her chest was tightening and tears burned against the back of her eyes when there was no good reason for them - this reaction was extreme even given her recent turbulent moods. Somehow, she thought as she dabbed in frustrated incomprehension at her leaking eyes with the sleeve of her dress while she fended off Balinor's anxious inquiries with her other hand, it felt as though something had just happened, but she had no idea what.

As she sniffed and counted to twenty, then to twenty again, and then again, she firmly told herself that she was just letting the poor way she was in get to her, convincing herself a molehill was a mountain. She told herself that until she could draw in shaky breaths without tearing up again, and give an extremely baffled and worried Balinor a shaky smile, trying to brush off the uncharacteristic emotional display like it never happened.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

The next day Hunith was more than happy to go collecting herbs, because not only did it get her out of the cottage but it also took her away from Ealdor, where Halig was still selling his goods in the center of town. The winter air tossed the strands of her hair that escaped from her head-scarf into her face and blew right through all the layers of shawls she'd wrapped around herself. Her legs felt weak from walking, which was ridiculous considering she only left the village around an hour ago.

Very few of the herbs she could use grew in the winter, so in the fall before the first frost she always stocked up on as much as she could. But when the chill came in the air and the food ran short, disease descended on the villagers like locust.  Seldom was the year when her stores lasted through to spring. Still this year had been mild, so Hunith was pleased when after searching through many damp, shady places she found a growth of mint which was not as lush as it would be in summer, but still mostly green. Bending down, careful not to get her dress soaked in the wet grass, she started picking.

From behind her came rustling in the foliage, but Hunith paid it no mind, thinking it most likely a deer or fox. There hadn't been a wolf pack in this area for years, and the bear population had seen a dramatic decrease as well due to all of Cenred's hunting parties. So she jumped like a startled rabbit, upsetting her basket of herbs and losing her balance when she heard a feminine voice from behind her say,

"I have found you."

Hunith pushed herself up where she'd fallen, brushing damp clumps of grass from her dress, as she warily turned her head to see who had spoken. Her eyes went wide in surprise, for before her was an incredibly gorgeous woman who was perhaps five years older than Hunith herself. Her alabaster skin looked as though it had never been touched by the sun and – judging by the silky billow of her well-cut and fitted dress, her richly dyed thick cloak, and the fur stole gracing her shoulders – Hunith could well believe that it never had. Her windswept dark brown hair fell in luscious waves down her shoulders, unhindered by the practical headwear that Hunith and other peasant women wore. It framed her exquisite face perfectly, highlighting her gossamer green eyes strikingly with its contrasting darkness.

Hunith felt a bit like a fish out of water, bug-eyed and open mouthed gasping. This was clearly a noblewoman. In the middle of the woods. In the middle of the woods by _Ealdor_ , which itself was out in the middle of nowhere. Hunith glanced around for a lady's horse, maybe a contingent of knights, or something to show she was just passing through here on the way to somewhere else. There was nothing; it looked as though she had walked here on foot, even though the nearest nobles lived a three hours’ walk away and she knew for a fact it was just the old lord and his son, no lady of the manor.

The noblewoman stood in front of her, awaiting some kind of response from the peasant on the ground. However all Hunith could think was _this isn't happening, this just doesn't happen_. Licking her lips Hunith stood stiffly and curtsied, wobbling in the unfamiliar movement. "My lady," she said, because what else could she say?

"My name is Vivienne, Lady of Tintagel," the noblewoman said formally, "I have been looking for you, Balinor's woman."

The air fled Hunith's lungs and she had to fight to keep her focus. "I'm afraid you've mistaken me for someone else, ma'am, I - I mean milady. I... I don't know anybody by that name!"

"No," the woman - Lady Vivienne, she said she was called - said, as though it was a fact as undeniable as the bite of the winter wind stinging their faces. "I recognize you; I saw your face in my dream last night. Do not be afraid, I am not here to bring you harm, but rather a warning from my husband."

"A warning?" Hunith questioned faintly. She didn't know Lady Vivienne, she didn't know any lords, and Balinor had never been on great terms with any nobility either, even before the king of Camelot betrayed him.

"Yes," the strange beauty said simply, then for the first time seemed to really see Hunith's ashen countenance. A flicker of something more human than the distant cold grace she held entered her expression. "You may want to sit down; I fear my tidings are ill. I have been following Halig since November and I know he has entered your village. You must be wary, for he is no peddler, that is only a mask for him to hide behind so he may have easy access to any community he wishes. In truth, he is a bounty hunter, sent specifically by the king of Camelot to capture the last dragonlord, Balinor."

A moment of silence echoed through the woods. Nothing stirred, as if all nature had frozen at the grim pronouncement.

"You were right, I think I do need to sit down," Hunith said faintly, sinking to the ground on her weak legs. Nausea, the ever present demon within her these days, clawed at her throat, and Hunith hastily bent over, hands flying to brush the stray locks of her hair out of her face as she upheaved her meager breakfast. _Pottage_ , she thought dully, cheeks burning in humiliation to be doing this in front of her noble visitor, _the only good thing you can say about it is at least it comes back up without a fuss_. Lady Vivienne jumped back, yanking her skirts away. After a moment, she cautiously made her way around the puddle of sick, rubbing Hunith's back tentatively as she dry heaved.

When at last she felt she could open her mouth without spilling the currently non-existent contents of her stomach, Hunith muttered a mortified, "Thanks."

Lady Vivienne withdrew her hands, but didn't move from her awkward crouch behind Hunith, "No, it is quite all right... are you feeling unwell? I could send for the physician of my manor."

"No, no there's no need," Hunith's cheeks were flaming. "I don't think... I don't think it's something to be cured, if you get my meaning."

"Ah," the lady drew in a knowing breath. "I see. Congratulations."

Hunith made an aborted laugh, out of nowhere struck by hilarity that she had finally admitted to what was truly behind her "illness" here and now to a stranger, with all that the lady had just said and _gods_ what was wrong with her, how could she laugh in a situation like this and why couldn't she just keep a rein on her emotions for longer than _five_ minutes, _five_ minutes was that truly too much to ask for!

_1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6..._

She gave up counting before she reached the double digits, turning to face the lady desperately. "Are you sure? About Halig, are you sure? It couldn't... couldn't be a mistake, or... or a mix-up or..."

Lady Vivienne took Hunith by the elbow, gently manoeuvring her to her feet and away from the puddle of sick. "My husband was present when the king sent for him, there is no mistake. I am sorry."

Hunith shook her head. "No. Don't be. Without you..." she couldn't put it into words. She'd have gone home happy that she'd found her mint and avoided Halig because he made her feel uncomfortable, but she would have been completely unprepared for him to make his move, helpless as a deer being stalked by the hunter. A shudder went through her as she remembered his wagon with its square iron latticing. A cage, it was a cage and how stupid she was because when she had first seen it she had even thought that, but brushed it off because who would hang trinkets on a cage and tell the villagers he was a peddler when he was really going kidnap one of them and then drive the man, caged like a beast, to his death all for mere _gold_...

Hunith took a deep breath, counting again. "Thank you. I just... thank you."

The lady said in a heavy voice, "We - my husband and I - could not do nothing. We too know what it is like to live in fear for the life of one we love. If it had been Morgause Uther sent Halig for..." for the first time the elegant lady's voice wavered, and she cleared her throat, continuing, "I only did what I had to, there is no need for thanks."

Hunith looked at Vivienne, really looked at her for the first time beyond the expensive clothing and her beautiful features. There were dark circles under her eyes as though she hadn't slept well in months, and now that Hunith was not so awed by her beauty the pale cast to Vivienne's face worried her. Her skin was pinched and stress lines creased the folds of her face, marring that which was otherwise flawless. She was thin, for a noblewoman, looking more like the village women did during the winters of bad harvests than she did a woman waited on hand and foot so her cup never ran dry.

"Still, I'm grateful," Hunith said, trying to convey it all in her voice. Vivienne's face was of one with her own suffering, yet she had still rode out to warn Balinor of the danger lurking in their tiny village. "You're a true noblewoman, noble of heart as well as blood."

Vivienne blinked, apparently startled, and huffed a small sound of amusement through her nose. "Thank you, I suppose. Farewell, ..."

"Hunith," she supplied, realizing she had never introduced herself. A thought tickled her - how had Vivienne known she was connected to Balinor? She said she saw her face in a dream, but how was that possible when they'd never met?

"Farewell, Hunith," Vivienne said stately, prim noblewoman persona once again in place. "Our paths are unlikely to cross again, but it has been a pleasure."

Hunith curtsied again, wobbling even more as she went deeper than just the perfunctory dip. "Farewell, my Lady."

Lady Vivienne wandered in the opposite direction of Ealdor, deeper into the forest and vanishing into its depth as though she had never been there in the first place. Hunith worried for her momentarily, then remembered that she had managed on her own just fine for months following Halig.

Hunith picked up her half-full basket of herbs and walked briskly back to Ealdor, heart hammering in her chest as she thought over everything she had said to Halig the day before, wishing she had for once forgotten to wear her dragon necklace. She snatched it off her neck and stuffed it in her pocket, even though it was too late to hide it from Halig’s notice. With rising horror, she remembered him saying he was staying with Old Ann. It was no longer amusing that she would have told him every piece of village gossip in the last couple decades.

She broke into a run.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

She found Balinor leaning against the wall of their cottage, carving something small while facing the woods. He slipped his mysterious project in his pocket at the sight of her and pushed himself off the wall, greeting her with a smile. His smile faltered as she came near, uncertainty creeping in at something in her countenance. She grabbed his arm, glancing over both shoulders and making sure Halig was otherwise occupied with a potential customer at his cage, before dragging Balinor bodily into their home.

She shut the door and rushed to close the windows, bringing to mind the urgent secrecy of their first meeting. Unable to stand for much longer on her legs which felt as fragile as glass and as heavy as lead, she sunk into her chair. He approached her from the other side of their table, hand reaching out to her.

"Halig's a bounty hunter," she gushed out breathlessly, sides heaving from her rush home. He froze, hand stopping outstretched half-way to her face. "He's come for you! He's going to take you away - Balinor, what are we going to _do_? He'll drag you off to Camelot, to Uther!"

He didn't press her for how she knew or ask if she was sure, both of which she was expecting. He didn't say anything at all, just pulled his hand away from her. Abruptly, he strode across the room and snatched the satchel she used to transport remedies off its hook. Wordlessly he emptied it of its contents and began to cram his spare set of clothes in in their places.

It felt as though someone was stepping on her throat, crushing her windpipe.

"Balinor?"

"I can't stay here," he was frantic as he grabbed more of his belongings, knocking things over in his haste. "They'll call you my accomplice. Uther burns anyone who harbours sorcerers and if the border didn't stop him then nothing else will. It's not safe for you, I need to go!"

_Go_. The word was like a kick to her stomach, which was turning nauseating somersaults on itself and she couldn't tell if it was from her or the baby. _The baby_. Oh gods he was serious, he was going to leave and she would be all alone with nothing but a cold spot on their mattress and an empty, silent little house while she struggled through each day all by herself. Back in the same lonely existence from before they'd met, only this time she wouldn't be whole. He'd rip out her heart and take it with him, only a shell of her remaining behind. That shell would still have their child, who would never know his or her father's unassuming nobility and the wordless little acts of kindness which showed his love. Would never feel a big calloused hand ruffling hair that would surely be dark like both of theirs, or hear the boom of his laughter, or eagerly beg a bedtime story from Dada. He'd be so good at bedtime stories.

Before she knew what she was doing, she'd sent the nearest thing to her - which happened to be a jar of preserves - flying across the room. It shattered against the wall to his right, and she didn't know whether or not she'd intended it to hit him. Pickled vegetables rained down their wall, and she didn't care even though they were supposed to last them the winter. "Don't you dare! Don't you _dare_!"

She rose unsteadily on her protesting limbs, unable to tell whether she was shaking out of exhaustion or anger or fear. "Don't you _dare_ walk out that door."

Balinor looked at the mess of preserve juice and clay, then at her completely dumbfounded. He stepped away from the sachet, coming towards her slowly with hands raised as though she were a wounded animal. He placed his large hands on her shoulders. "Hunith, calm yourself."

"Don't tell me to calm down!" She shrieked, slapping away his hands. "What did you expecting, telling me something like that?! That I would just sit here like a swooning princess and say, 'Oh I understand, I'll be waiting for the uncertain day you ever poke your head through this door again, supper will be waiting'? We are in a relationship and that means we are in this _together_ , you inconsiderate dollophead, and I will not be pushed aside like I'm made out of glass!"

"It's not like that!" Balinor said forcefully, his voice cracking as he pleaded with her. "You don't understand. Everyone I ever knew, everyone I loved were taken away from me. I wasn't even there! Not with my parents, not with my people... and the one time I was there I still couldn't save any of them. Please, I just want you to stay safe. You're all I have that's good in this world and I can't bear to lose you as well."

"And what makes you think I could bear to lose you? To stay here and pray that you're still safe but never know for sure if you're still alive or if they've caught you and I'm waiting on the faint hope that a man whose already dead will turn up again someday? THAT YOU'RE LYING DEAD IN THAT MAN'S COURTYARD WHILE I SIT AT HOME PINING!"

"Hunith, lower your voice. The neighbours will hear," he hissed, glancing between the door and windows as though expecting Old Ann to burst through any second.

"To hell with the neighbours!" She never spoke like this, even in her recent moodiness she had never actually yelled, but everything was churning away at her insides and bubbling up to try and force its way out. Including, to her horror, sobs bubbling in her throat. No, no not now, she couldn't break down now, she had to be sensible she had to make him see reason, to convince him that everything would be alright and he didn't have to leave. With difficulty, she lowered her voice and attempted to steady it. "Did you think I would just let you abandon me and the baby?"

"Baby?" Balinor's voice hitched, going high in a way that normally she'd find amusing but now only made her snap,

"Yes, you enormous clotpole, I'm PREGNANT!"

The word hung heavy in the air, the cat out of the bag at last. Hunith gave a choked noise, unsure if she was laughing or crying. This was not at all how she wanted to tell him. She hadn't worked out how she would break the news, but it would certainly not have been like this, with both of them anxious and desperate and arguing for the first time since they'd met. It should have been a happy occasion that left them both smiling and hugging with only bright thoughts about the future.

How had this happened? Why was everything so wrong?

All the fight drained out of her like a skin that had been holding so much it burst, splattering the liquid everywhere at once and retaining none, utterly spent. "I'm pregnant," she said again, her shoulders losing their tension. She met Balinor's conflicted eyes and softened her own, "You're going to be a father. You can't just walk from that, you just _can't_."

She couldn't tell what thoughts were behind his shocked, tortured face. He looked as though all his dreams had come true in front of him and then been snatched away. Guilt stabbed at her heart; it was unfair to dump this all on him at once. She wished she'd told him sooner. She hadn't bled for two moon cycles already, she should have told him her suspicions before now. But she had put it off, telling herself she'd do it when there was absolutely no doubt, and now they were both paying the price for her hesitance.

He ran a hand through his hair, looking so lost. "But don't you see?" His voice was broken, and he sounded just as desperate as she felt. "I'm like the harbinger of death to everyone close to me. Just by being here, I'm putting you and the - the baby in danger."

"You don't have to go," she begged, willing it to be true with all her heart. "We can find another way, it doesn't have to be like this."

He laughed humourlessly, "What other way? Do you see one, because I don't."

"We'll find it, together," she insisted, taking his hands and squeezing them. She didn't let go, doing so would feel like defeat. If he wanted to leave, he'd have to rip his hands out of hers. "If you just give us the chance to."

"And if we don't?" He looked torn - like he wanted to believe her, but couldn't bring himself to trust fate to hand them a miracle solution.

"Then I'll go with you." He looked like he was about to protest, but she didn't want to hear it. "And nothing you say can convince me otherwise. If it doesn't matter what you leaving would do to me, think of the baby."

The cruel fate of unacknowledged bastard children hung unsaid between them.

"What kind of life would we have, raising a child while running from Uther?" His said bitterly.

"We'd be together," she said sharply, "and that's what's most important. And it hasn't come to that yet; we'll think of how to deal with that if it comes to it, not before. For now, what we truly need to be thinking of is how to get rid of this bounty hunter."

"How are we supposed to do that?" He said defeatedly.

"I don't know," Hunith admitted, "but I've had no time to think it over. There must be a way; we just have to find it. But we never will if you give up now, without even trying."

Balinor flinched, then his shoulders slumped. He pulled his hands away from hers and her heart faltered before he wrapped her in his arms. Her face was pressed against his shoulder, and she could feel his slight trembling. "I want to believe you so much."

"Then believe me," she said softly.

He pulled away, still holding her but now they were looking each other in the face. He said, "All right. I'll give it a try."

In spite of all that they still needed to overcome, just those words made her feel positively radiant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Hunith, hormone induced mood swings are the worst. All this crud happening when the chemicals in her body are doing funky things already, no wonder she's upset.


	6. 0x06 - If I Stay (Part 2)

They talked until after the sun went down, throwing around ideas and suggestions, getting frustrated by all the dead ends they came to, until it seemed that there was nothing they could do to escape the situation save for Balinor's initial plan to run away before Halig made his move.

If they killed him – an idea desperation drove them to consider with queasiness – it solved nothing. Halig's disappearance would only confirm Balinor's location, and Uther would send others in his place. They'd win the battle but lose the war. Similarly, even if they forced Halig from Ealdor nothing would be solved. He'd still know who and where Balinor was, and would only go to Uther for reinforcements. Every idea they had all became pointless in the long term, even if it would grant them a short term reprieve.

Until, at last, Balinor put down his hands on the table and said, "We're going about this all the wrong way. Halig is only in it for the money, the real problem is Uther. Uther will never leave me be until I'm dead. So there's only one way we can do this…"

From there, their plan came together. The stars were coming out when Balinor slung her satchel, its overstuffed innards straining at the seams, over his shoulder and silently opened her door.

She kissed him goodbye, then whispered fearfully, "How long do you need me to stall before bringing him?"

"As long as you can. And remember, everything rests on making him see you as harmless."

Then he mumbled a goodbye, wrapping his arms around her as if he planned to never let go. They stood like that for a moment, then he pulled away reluctantly. Her door slide silently shut, leaving her alone in her dark cottage while he stole away into the night.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

"Hunith!" Halig hailed her heartily late the next morning when she stepped out of her door with a basket for the eggs and a pail for the milk. "I was wondering if I might have a word with you?"

Hunith's hands clenched on the handles, not expecting him outside her door. How long had he been standing there? What about the front of being a peddler? He couldn't have enough proof to arrest Balinor yet.

They'd gone over everything they'd said and done around Halig, as well as anything Old Ann could have told him, and everything was circumstantial. If they were in Camelot and the law stood behind him it would be different, but here in Essetir sorcery was still legal, even if it was vastly unpopular due to Cenred's tendency to use sorcerers as weapons against any who rebelled in any form.

So though the people generally were more than happy to turn a blind eye to a sorcerer being taken away, the people of Ealdor would not let a stranger drag away one of their own just on the timing of "Keith's" arrival and the shape of Hunith's necklace. There was strength in numbers, and Halig was cautious. He wouldn't gamble everything on being able to either convince or evade the people of the village as well as Cenred's patrols. He would either first seek proof or try to follow Balinor when he went out alone. And that gave them time for the plan they cobbled together the previous night.

It took all her acting ability to force herself to smile. "Yes?"

Halig's eyes were once again too intent upon her to suit the amiable smile on his face. "I've been looking for new ideas to add to my wares, and I think you could help me. Ann was telling me of some charming little baskets you had sitting on your windows around harvest time. Do you think I could see them?"

It was certainly not what Hunith had expected him to say, and nothing she had rehearsed the night before prepared her to answer that question. "No," she stalled, desperately scrambling to come up with a good excuse. "No, I'm afraid that's not possible."

His surprise looked faked, "Why's that?"

"I don't have them anymore," she spoke slowly to gain as much time as she could. A hazy lie formed in her mind. "We – Keith and I – we put them out with food for the spirits on Samhain."

"I see," he nodded, eyes never leaving her face. "But don't people normally take back the containers once Samhain is finished?"

"We left them in the woods," she half-lied. "It was dark, I don't think I could find the exact spot if I tried. They're probably not there anymore anyways. By now they must have been trampled by wild animals or rotted from the dew."

"Or carried off down the river," he said overly casually. Hunith forced herself not to react. How did he know that?

What else did he know?

"Perhaps," she said, trying so hard to hide her turbulent emotions that it came out woodenly.

His smile widened. "Such a shame. It was the man living with you who made them, wasn't it?"

There was no way he should know that, it wasn't something even Old Ann was aware of. As far as the villagers were concerned, the baskets appeared on Hunith's windowsills before Samhain and disappeared after. Whether it was Hunith or "Keith" who made them wasn't something they were privy to.

Though not knowing how he could have found that out was alarming enough, what alarmed her more was that he wasn't bothering to feign ignorance. Either he was slipping in his mask of innocent peddler, or he felt close enough to catching his quarry that he felt it unnecessary to uphold.

Hunith could only nod, not trusting herself to speak.

This was not at all like the little charade of "Hunith and Keith" she put on for the villagers. Her one man audience already knew the play for a play. He was sitting indulgently waiting for the right moment to run up on stage and rip the players' masks off, revealing the actors beneath.

"I should like to have a word with him about the way they're made," the bounty hunter moved towards her door.

Panic hit her full force. "No!" she cried, forgetting her lines. This was not in the script. This confrontation was not scheduled to happen yet.

Halig ignored her, apparently done being a considerate peddler. He threw open the door to her cottage, bathing the inside in the light of the late morning sun and exposing all that was within. And all that was missing, including the tall dark-haired man in question.

For the first time Halig looked thrown off, as if his script had been altered too by this new development. He stood there a moment, dumbfounded, mouthing the word _impossible_. Hunith wondered what he meant by that, and how long he had been watching her house waiting for her or Balinor to come out, that he would think it impossible one could have slipped by him.

He spun around and narrowed his eyes at Hunith dangerously, at last looking the part of a man who would shove innocent people in cages and haul them off to be executed. "Where is he?"

This was coming too soon. Several acts had been thrown out the window and now they were coming to the final act before the stage had been set. Hunith was being thrust on an unset stage in only half her costume, reading out her lines while she tried to think of how to get everything back on track. The audience focused on her, striding towards her and shaking her shoulders as he repeated the question. Hunith burst out sobbing.

"He left me!" she cried, anguished, tears running down her face. She blessed the tumult in her moods; she never would have been able to will tears otherwise. She did not have to feign her distress, only the reasons for it. After weeks of biting her tongue and forcing neutrality on herself it was strangely liberating to be over the top emotional. Perhaps it was because of the pent up stress of the situation, but it was much easier to act distressed than it was to feign calm.

"He told me he loved me, but he didn't! He never did! He lied to me! All this time…" She buried her face in her hands, shoulders heaving dramatically as she sobbed. She longed to peak through her fingers to see how he was taking her performance. Pudgy yet calloused hands roughly grabbed her by her elbow, dragging her down the street.

With her hand forced from her face, she could see several confused heads poking out of doorways and windows, watching the spectacle without understanding it. A couple of her friends made moves to step forwards, but she frantically shook her head. Being held up would buy her precious time, yes, but she couldn't predict how Halig would deal with those who tried to interfere with his hunt. She and Balinor had entered this stage knowing they couldn't ask for help from anyone.

Halig didn't stop until they'd reached the cover of the woods, where they could not be seen from the village. Whirling her around to face him, he held each of her shoulders in a vice grip. Hunith was not a short woman, but he towered more than a head over her. She could only see his broad chest that dwarfed her as though she were a lone bulrush stalk in a field, easy to snap in half with one hand.

He shook her violently. She would have to crane back her neck to look him in the face, but though she couldn't see his expression his voice was as hard and cold as granite when he demanded, "What do you mean, he left?"

Hunith sniffed, not bothering to wipe away her tears. Let her eyes swell up to a puffy pink, let her tears run clean streaks down her unwashed face. Let her look completely helpless and simple.

"He said he was tired of me," She forced the words out of her throat and hoped the choked quality added to her credibility, rather than subtracted from it. "He told me I was too clingy, and he had never been serious about me. He said he could do much better than me, and… and…"

Halig released her, and she immediately took a step away from him. With the small amount of distance she could see his face, which was twisted in disgust at her display. "This is just great," he spat, more to himself than her. "I spend months tracking this man, and just as I'm about to nab him he runs off because of some lover's tiff."

"Tracking?" Hunith inquired with fake innocence between her fake sobs. "What do you mean? Did he do something wrong?"

"Don't pretend you don't know. I saw how you reacted to the mention of dragons, I heard you yesterday."

Hunith's vision blacked, but after a few seconds of panic her brain returned and she forced herself to see sense. If he had heard everything he wouldn't have been waiting for Balinor outside her house. He'd know exactly where he was and they wouldn't be having this conversation. Trying for embarrassment rather than horror, she said, "Oh? W-What did you hear?"

" 'Don't you dare!'" he sneered, throwing her words back in her face. His eyes challenged her to deny she said any such thing. His voice was comically high as he mocked her, and his hands made ineffectual fluttery spasms. "'Don't tell me to calm down!' 'That you're lying dead in that man's courtyard while I sit at home pining!' 'To hell with the neighbours!'"

Hunith's heartbeats calmed to a normal rate – he hadn't heard anything truly important. Then his next mimicked words, the unnatural highness twice as exaggerated as any of the previous quotes, made them stop again. "'I'm pregnant!' "

It was silent except for her fake sobs, which increased to hide the way she was nearly hyperventilating.

What was she to do?

What could she say, to convince a man like this to leave her baby alone?

Would Uther pay for him to bring in the mother of a dragonlord's child, executing mother and unborn babe at once?

Would they throw her into the dungeons until she gave birth, ripping the child from her arms to drown in a well?

She needed to convince him that he had misheard or misunderstood her somehow, or that she had lied, anything just so he didn't look to her womb with gold coins in his eyes.

"But even that didn't stop him!" she cried, begging this would work. She could think of no other excuse. "I – I thought… if there was a baby… even if he didn't stay for me, for the sake of a child – his child! … _but even that didn't stop him_!"

"Are you saying you just made it up?" the bounty hunter asked incredulously. "You lied about being pregnant to try and force your man to stay?"

Hunith nodded, her shoulders still shaking with deliberate sobs and her too heavy breathing. "I know I shouldn't have, but nothing else was working! He was leaving me!"

"And you didn't think he might get suspicious when no baby ever came?" Halig asked as though amazed by her sheer stupidity. He rolled up the utmost contempt into one word and pronounced it like it was all the explanation he needed, " _Women_."

Any other time, Hunith would have slapped anyone who said that word in that tone. Now she blessed him for his contempt for the other sex. If he wanted to underestimate her and give her an advantage over him, she was not going to protest.

The bounty hunter brought the conversation back to his original point. "But you can't deny you knew about him when I heard you screaming about dying in Uther's courtyard."

"Uther?" she said, blinked her moist eyes at him, "You mean Uther Pendragon? The king of Camelot? What's he got to do with Keith?"

"Don't pretend you don't know."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said, mind in chaos while she tried to figure out how to turn her words into something innocuous. "I never said anything about _Uther's_ courtyard. I was talking about Lord Pactshen."

"Really?" Halig said in distrust, "I'm sure."

"Keith was saying he was sure he could find a job in the manor," her lie was growing as she spoke, and she was terrified she'd end up accidentally contradicting herself. "I – I told him of the rumours of how the lord's servants are treated, but he didn't listen. He said it was all just smoke with no fire. And now… now he's gone and… and he'll be beaten and left for dead…"

Halig didn't look convinced, but she thought she saw doubt flicker through his eyes, there and gone in an instant. "And the dragons?"

"Keith was rather strange when he gave me the necklace," she and Balinor had spent nearly an hour practicing this one lie.

Whether or not Halig decided to trust her, and thus whether or not their plan would work, hinged on her making him believe she was just a foolish, naïve, besotted woman who swallowed every lie she'd been told by a handsome man asking her for shelter. That he had seen her with the dragon necklace and watched her turn white when a connection between Balinor and dragons was suggested was a kink they were aware of, so they'd prepared in advance an explanation to smooth it out.

After all the time they spent rehearsing this one line, she was not going to mess it up now.

"I also thought when he gave it to me – who gives a woman a carving of something so terrifying? But he's normally so kind… And then yesterday, it was only when you asked about whether he's interested in dragons that I realized how this is strange but… whenever he's restless or bored he pulls out a block of wood and starts whittling away at it. But he only ever carves one thing, it's only just dragons. It's so weird. It's – it's creepy."

Halig looked like he wasn't sure whether or not he should believe her, and she pressed her advantage. "I didn't want to, but I couldn't stop myself from thinking… what if – what _if_ he was getting an interest. Not just in dragons, but some of the thing he says when he thinks I don't hear him… What if he takes up an interested in… in the _dark arts_?"

She let horror filled the last words, screwing up every inch of her face to be a fearful peasant.

She must have been convincing, because most of the suspicion seemed to leave Halig's face, and he said with icy ire, "With that man it wouldn't be taking up an interest, it would be returning to old habits. You've been harbouring a sorcerer."

"No!" Hunith protested in feigned desperation. "He isn't -! He can't be! Keith would never-!"

Halig actually seemed to get some kind of perverse relish out of her supposed heartbreak. "I assure you, he is," he said with something that was almost amusement. "And his name's not Keith, it's Balinor."

"Wh- His name isn't even Keith?! But, but!"

"You've been taken in," he said with a definite snort of laughter. If Hunith hadn't hated him already for the fear he was causing her and Balinor, then she'd hate him now from the sick pleasure he got shattering a woman's life.

Hunith hung her head, letting despair and hurt and sorrow flicker across her face, murmuring just loudly enough that he could hear her, "Is there anything he didn't lie to me about?"

With those words, she morphed her face into anger. "Take me with you." Halig looked startled. "Take me with you, I'll help you find him."

"Why would you help me?" he said warily, like a fox that had spotted a trap and was trying to make out what it was.

"Because I gave everything I have to that scoundrel, and he was lying to me the whole time! He didn't even tell me his name! He was a _sorcerer_! I want to rip him apart with my bare hands!"

"That would just reduce the fee; Uther pays better if they're still fit to be executed when you bring them in." That was the single most repulsive thing she had ever heard. Halig continued, scornfully, "So it's a good thing I don't need your help."

"You don't even know where he went," she said her pre-thought out excuse, which was instantly made null when he countered with,

"Lord Pactshen's manor, according to you." he raised an eyebrow, giving her a look so mocking she gritted her teeth.

Hunith cursed her hastily thought up lie. Improvising, she made up, "You'll never get him once he's there."

"Why's that?" he asked indulgently, humouring her with a condescending smirk on his face.

"Because… because once he's there he'll have no need to hide his skills in the dark arts!"

"How kind of you to worry about me," Halig's face hardened, and he scoffed. "But if the use of magic stopped me from catching sorcerers then I'd have no food in my belly."

"Even if they're protected by a lord?"

He wasn't scoffing anymore. "What?"

"Of course I didn't realize when he told me where he was going," Hunith tried to iron out the crease she'd made with her poorly thought out cover for her poorly thought out yelling fit. She was so stupid, how could she have screamed all that the previous night without a care for who heard, when Halig could have – and did – hear her just as easily as any of her neighbours? Channeling all her self-rebuke into her words and letting him think it came from a spurned lover, she said heatedly, "But who would scrub floors day after day, when all he has to do is reveal his magic and the nobility would sweep him off his feet with riches in exchange for his services? The people pay quicker when the collection man can end their lives just like _that_!"

She snapped her fingers, and left him to think over the implications of trying to snatch away a noble's pet sorcerer from under his nose for a minute. "Once he reveals himself to the lord, it will be much more difficult to get to him. Fortunately for you, I know that he owes quite a few people around here quite a few favours and they won't be happy when they discover he's taken off. He'll need to take a way they won't expect, and all this last week he's been asking me for directions to one route: the way through the Tunnels."

"The what?" He said distrustfully.

"The Tunnels," Hunith said, "An underground labyrinth of twists and turns that changes with the tiniest tremors of the earth, leading to a series of dead ends, so even if you find a map of it somewhere it'll be obsolete by now. You'll never get through it without someone who knows them to guide you."

"I could just ask someone else."

"You could," she acknowledged, "but then you'd have to explain why you want to go, and why you're arresting Kei- Palimor. I don't know how much you get paid for this, but would it be worth it splitting the fee?" He grimaced at the thought. "All I want is to get back at him. That's payment in and of itself."

"You're very keen on this," he looked like he was trying to peer through to her eyes to her very soul, to read what secrets lay there.

"They say hell hath no wrath like a woman scorned," she said grimly.

He looked her up and down, a contemplative gleam in his eyes, and then he drew so close to her she could feel his hot breath on her forehead. It smelt of rotting eggs. She fought the urge to vomit, determined not to lose. Her deceptions were hanging by a thread; she couldn't afford to showcase her morning sickness. "You'll show me the way through the Tunnels, and nothing else. Any strange moves, and I'll make you wish you were never born."

She nodded, and with her in the lead they went deeper into the woods, in the direction of the Tunnels. She wondered uneasily if looping so that the river lay between them and the Tunnels, forcing them to search for a crossing since the bridge had collapsed in the heavy winter rain, would take up enough time that the stage would be set when they arrived.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Inside a poorly lit cavern, a man stood poised over a large bubbling cauldron, chanting a string of harsh words in an archaic tongue. Out of the potion rose a steaming miniature humanoid shape, dripping in viscous red liquid. A misshapen bulge was tied around the figure's neck like a hideous scarf, its long thin fibers unmistakeable even soaked in potion as anything but human hair.

The figured hovered in the air before the man as though waiting for him to reach out and take it, but instead he slid his hands into his pocket, pulling out a rough blade. He slashed the blade across his palm with a grimace, and then lunged forwards and grabbed hold of the figure with his injured hand, squeezing. Red drops fell, a mingling of potion and blood.

With a command the frothing red liquid in the cauldron vanished, and in its place water filled in. It was still at first, then bubbles rose to the surface. The man stood patiently, hand clenched with white knuckles around the figure, as the water agitated. When it was churning, he let go, dropping the red humanoid shape into the cauldron with a small splash.

He clutched his injured hand to his chest, and bent down to dig around the sachet at his feet. Picked over plants were shifted around as he dug with his good hand, until he finally pulled out a flask of water and a roll of bandages. After washing the precise slice in his palm with water from the flask, he mumbled a string of powerful words as he wrapped his hand.

The man backed away from the boiling cauldron, leaning against the wall and wiping his brow with his good hand. Pulling out a small round band of wood from his pocket, he held it between the forefinger and thumb of his injured hand. He carefully set about carving into it with his blade, the often-done movement of his hand not as steady as normal.

Everything was done, now it was out of his hands. All he could do was wait in tense anticipation for the hours to pass until the ritual reached completion.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

The sun was an orange globe half-concealed by the treeline by the time Hunith and Halig reached the entrance to the Tunnels. She had led him on the longest detour she could pull off, "tripped" and "twisted her ankle" so she hobbled behind him at a snail pace until he got fed up and slung her over his shoulder, and insisted they stop to make torches so they could see inside the Tunnels.

She couldn't stall any longer. They were here.

She could only hope that Balinor had had enough time to get everything ready.

Halig set her down, keeping a painful grip on her shoulders as she stumbled on her hurt ankle. She hadn't truly sprained it, but there was already a mottled bruise the size of her fist spreading. Gingerly, she placed some of her weight on it and bit back a cry.

Halig's face was a deep scowl as he looked at her, and any degree of trust in her intentions he may have had was rapidly dissipating. She had been walking a thin line trying to delay him enough to give Balinor the time to set everything up, but not enough that he would suspect she was stalling him. She had a bad feeling her toes may have strayed across the invisible line more than once.

His fingers dug in her shoulders, and Hunith bit back a whimper. Pitiful foolish woman she might be playing, but she wouldn't let someone like him see her genuine pain. He hissed in her ear, his breath unpleasantly blowing on the sensitive skin inside, "I'm watching you. Any little tricks, any more little delays, and you'll be in for it. Uther doesn't pay nearly well enough for people who harbour sorcerers for me to normally bother sneaking them over borders on their own, but I'm sure two people in my cage won't make the trip any more difficult than one."

Hunith nodded, not trusting herself to speak and not sure if he would still believe the foolish jilted lover façade anyways. They entered the tunnels, lit only by the fire of the torch Halig held in the hand not holding her.

The only sound was their breathing and the echoing of their footsteps. Hunith could feel his eyes fixed on her back the whole way she led him, and her prearranged plans to "accidentally" lead him to a few dead ends died away. He would know what she was doing if she was that obvious; she had already turned a half hour trip into a half day trip.

She was unsure if her continued well-being despite his doubts over whether she was helping or hindering him spoke of a miracle, a testament to her acting ability, or a disregard for women so deep that he couldn't imagine even if she acted against him she could cause him any true damage. Perhaps it was a combination of all three.

Her heart picked up as she led him through the most indirect route she knew of, pounding sickeningly in her chest like a drunken drummer. Once again nausea rose in her, so she could not have spoken if she wanted to as she was concentrating on forcing the burning sensation back down her throat. She'd been through this several times already, and somehow managed to keep her condition from him each time either by force of will or claiming she needed to answer nature's call.

But whether it was the damp of the caves that made it so cold their breaths billowed like smoke clouds from their mouths affecting her constitution or the squeezing anxiety in her innards that would have been sickening enough without having to fight the literal urge to be sick, Hunith was at the end of her endurance. The corners of her eyes teared with the effort of holding everything inside, making the dark cavernous path even more indistinct.

She was so caught up in suppressing the need to vomit that she barely had enough attention to spare to lead him to the right destination and avoid a certain section of the Tunnels. She was surprised enough to stumble when Halig suddenly jerked back on her shoulder, pulling them both flat against the wall. Refocusing her eyes and following Halig's intent gaze, she saw a long shadowed figure folded back against the wall of the tunnel up ahead. The silhouette was humanoid, leaning with its back to the rock wall, legs stretched out idly and head slumped forwards in a sleeping position, with the chin resting on the chest.

Hunith swallowed. Halig crept forwards silent as a cat, surprisingly stealthy on his fat feet. The candle illuminated the face, putting Balinor's sleeping features into sharp relief. Uncertainty tore through her as all her doubts when they'd first come up with the plan resurfaced. Her stomach clenched, and she thought she might finally lose the fight to keep her food down, when everything happened at once.

With only a great _crack_ as warning, the rocky ceiling came tumbling down in a cloud of ash and rock. Halig jumped back with a cry of surprise, narrowly avoiding being clipped by a falling rock the size of his arm. And just before a wall of rocks and dust separated them, Hunith saw something that calmed her racing heart.

There was no smoky mist expelling from the leaning figure's face.

Halig let out a yell of frustration, grabbing the rocks and throwing them away violently. He barked out an order for her to help him, and she came forwards to do so silently. Her hands were scratched and dusty grey by the time they had shifted enough rock to climb through. The sight on the other side of the wall did make her lose the battle with nausea, even knowing what she knew.

The debris covered cave floor on the other side was dyed a rusty red with blood, a limp body pinned down on its belly by multiple large rocks. Two hands lay splayed to each side, their exposed flesh the only part of the felled figure untouched by injury. Shaggy black hair spread out like the remnant of a shattered ink bottle, mercifully concealing the vacant features.

The sound her own retching and breathless gasps did not disguise the sound of a blade being slid from its sheath, nor the hacking sound of metal repeatedly striking into flesh and bone. When the sounds stopped she didn't look up from where she lay crouched, not wanting to see what she knew was there.

"You said you would tear him limb from limb," the smirk was audible in his voice, "and yet you're this worked up over a bit of blood."

She didn't meet his eyes, and he continued as though trying to get a rise out of her. "It's a shame I couldn't get him alive, but so long as I bring back a head as proof it's still a worthwhile investment. Say what you want about Uther Pendragon, but he knows how to motivate others to get rid of his enemies for him."

"Keep going straight and you'll come to the end of the Tunnels," she said wearily, wishing he would just go away. This day had been the longest of her life, she was more than ready for it to be over. The walk back to Ealdor – an hour tops now that she didn't have to stall – seemed like an impossibly long journey. "You can't miss it."

She never found out if he was disappointed she didn't provide him with a better reaction. The sound of his receding footsteps echoed down the Tunnels, receding into the distance. Hunith waited until she couldn't hear them anymore, then counted to 200. After she was sure he was gone, she pushed herself to her feet, swaying as she finally was able to stop hiding her exhaustion.

A bandaged hand steadied her, its owner letting out a hiss of pain and cursing softly in a familiar voice. "I keep forgetting to use the other one."

Hunith twirled where she stood and flung her arms around Balinor's neck, making him stumble back several paces with the unexpected reaction. His arms rose in response to wrap around her. "You knew it was just a poppet."

"But it looked just like you," Hunith protested, burying her face in his shoulder. That had been the point; after all, Halig wouldn't believe Balinor's "death" if the "body" didn't look just like him. But his prone, bleeding form was burned against the back of her eyelids, even if she knew it wasn't him.

The indent of the moleskin pouch that he wore at all times hidden under his tunic pressed into her cheek, reassuring her with this tidbit of information about him only she knew. His chest rose and fell against hers, and she'd never so appreciated the simple feel of him breathing. She inhaled his scent: wood, fire, sweat, herbs, and something that was just him. It calmed her. "The poppet, it'll last long enough for Halig to get it to Camelot?"

"It bloated as much as we could hope for in the timeframe we had. In this weather it'll retain most of the water and potion for several days, maybe a week if it's extra damp. It'll shrink a bit, but it won't turn back into straw until all the water evaporates. By then it'll be buried in the unmarked grave outside of Uther's citadel, with no one the wiser."

Hunith let out a sigh of relief.

The night previous when they had gone over every aspect of their situation, tossing about ideas and getting more and more frustrated, the way forward finally became clear when Balinor said, "Uther will never leave me be until I'm dead. So there's only one way we can do this: I have to die."

Hunith had come dangerously close to slapping him when he – perhaps sensing this – hastily continued with, "I mean, we have to make him _think_ I'm dead."

And from there, he told her about a complicated and obscure piece of magic which would turn a straw poppet into the image of a person whose blood it absorbed and whose hair was wrapped around it. The poppet would be just that, a life-sized doll, but it would look like him, and if punctured it would bleed with his blood.

Meaning that they could "kill" it with Halig none the wiser that it was never alive to begin with.

The downside to the spell was that it not only needed the poppet to be coated in a potion that took considerable time to prepare, but to grow to human size it needed to be left in boiling water for hours. Balinor explained to her that the effectiveness of the spell was dependent on how much water the poppet soaked up; the sooner it was taken out, the more quickly it would shrink and turn back into straw.

All day, Hunith had been haunted by the terrible worry that she would lead Halig to the trap too soon, and everything would be for nothing as the poppet turned back into straw right before his eyes, and he realized he'd been duped.

She let out a deep breath, feeling the tension leaving her body as she did so. It all worked. They were fine. Halig was leaving, Uther would soon think Balinor was dead, she'd talked Balinor out of leaving her, and she and he were completely fine.

After all the worry of the last day - had so little time truly passed since the lady found her in the woods? - it seemed almost too good to be true. She begged the silent heavens to let it last. She wouldn't be able to sleep for weeks without waking up and grasping for him in the dark, to make sure he was still there.

"It's probably best if we don't go home just yet," he warned her, "Halig has to go back for his cage, and he might stay the night in village."

She didn't think she could walk back anyways. Half a day of leading a ruthless bounty hunter on a wild goose chase through the wilderness had taken more out of her than she'd realized at the time. Now that the heightened emotions driving her had died down, she was left feeling limp.

"Mhhm," she murmured against his shoulder, eyelids dropping, thinking she could just fall asleep where she stood.

He scooped her up, startling her eyes open wide, holding her like a princess to his chest, and turned down the narrow path he'd been hiding in. Hunith closed her eyes, nearly falling asleep by the time he placed her down on a thin woolen blanket.

"You came prepared," she joked, still with her eyes shut. The cave was harder than her cottage's wood floor, but just then she didn't care.

"When I left in the middle of the night to go brew a potion in bitterly cold stone tunnels, I thought having something to keep me warm might be nice," he said with his wry humour. Gently, he called her name, "Hunith? Open your eyes."

She did so, even though her eyelids felt like they were weight down with lead. The cave was lit with a small woodless fire that he must have started with magic, though she hadn't heard him say the spell. Kneeling beside her was Balinor, his unwounded hand still supporting her back.

His other hand was held in front of her, and a small circle of wood stood out against the clean white bandage wrapped around his palm. She recognized it from its small size as the project he had been careful to hide from her for the last couple weeks. Tiny marks decorated every surface, and looking closer she saw it was a heavily stylized dragon's body wrapped so that it circled itself, tail meeting head.

He rolled it so that he held it between his thumb and forefinger, "I know this isn't a good time, but if there's one thing life has seen fit to teach me over and over it's that you're guaranteed nothing beyond what you have in the present. So even if the world goes up in flames tomorrow, at least I won't have to regret that I didn't ask you this now, while I still could."

He took his other arm from her back, trailing it down her left arm until it came to her hand. The soft glow of the magical fire illuminated the exhausted but loving look he was giving her. Tenderly, he took her left hand and separated one finger from the rest. Her eyes widened.

"Will you marry me?"

Responses flew through her head, all too insufficient to describe the way she was feeling just then. She tossed words around her chaotic brain, and as the moment dragged on and he waited for her she gave up on them entirely. Instead, she held out her hand and beamed her most radiant smile, nodding as he slid the ring he'd made her on her finger.

And for a moment she forgot she was in a freezing cave in the middle of the winter after a stressful day of worrying and walking all over the surrounding area. She held her left hand close to her face, admiring the ring and all it symbolized, and then took his good hand with hers, leaning against him and shutting her eyes.

She'd probably wake up in the morning with an awful pain in her neck from the way she slept. And then they'd still have to make their way back to Ealdor, where she'd have to make up some story to give the confused villagers over what had happened between her and Halig and where "Keith" was in all this.

Still, she couldn't find it in herself to worry about any of that just then. Because in that moment, everything was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Faking one's death may be a little cliché as a solution, but in canon Uther thinks Balinor is dead before Gaius says he's in hiding. Yet Uther sent people to hunt him down 20 years ago, so he knew he was alive then. It's not too out-there to think Balinor might have done something like this at some point in canon.


	7. 0x07 - Lullaby to the Son of Magic

Shavings of wood fell to the ground before him, peppering the green with flecks of light brown. They trailed behind him as he paced outside the door to the cottage. Towards the side of the house was a large pile where he had been sitting, before he could no longer remain stationary.

A loud cry from within made his latest cut jerk unexpectedly, shaving off more than he intended. Balinor determinedly set about smoothing it out, trying not to think about what was happening inside, or the exasperated matronly women who ordered him out of his own home until it was over.

Hunith cried again, and surely that was not a normal noise, he thought, wood and knife frozen in his hands. Surely something was going wrong. He stood there, unmoving with his head turned towards the door, and the cries from inside continued only broken during moments where he assumed she must be drawing air into her lungs before screaming again. He was seriously contemplating going back inside even though there was nothing he could do, and then they stopped altogether.

In their place was a hoarse wail that rose and fell in waves. It sounded like a cat in distress.

The door opened a crack, and the eye of one of Hunith's friends was visible through it. "You can go in now. It's a boy."

He felt like his brain had fled his body. Numbly, Balinor deposited the half-finished carving and knife beside a stack of wooden teethers and simple toys he'd whittled in the tense nine hours of waiting as a distraction. He flung the door wide open, flooding the inside with light. The women who came to help with the labour brought their hands to their eyes, startled by the harsh glare of the afternoon sun after so many hours in the dark.

Only two didn't flinch at the light, both of whom had their backs to the door. One was Old Ann, and the other was a red-headed friend of Hunith's named Catrin. Old Ann was peering nosily over Catrin's shoulder as the red-headed mother of six rubbed a damp towel against a tiny blotchy expanse of flesh.

The baby's screams intensified at the introduction of the bright light, and out of nowhere as though pushed by a sudden gust of wind the door slammed, nearly sending Balinor careening forwards when it struck the back of his ankles. The room was bathed in darkness again, and the child's shrieks abated.

Catrin's hand jerked away from the tiny body as though scalded, and Old Ann took a step back, clutching a wizened hand to her heart. Hastily, Catrin grabbed a bundle of swaddling cloths and wrapped the baby, hurrying over to where Hunith lay on their bedding.

Hunith took her son with a beautiful smile on her shiny sweat-coated face, tenderly stroking his cheek with one finger. Catrin backed away with a slight tremble in her step, just as Old Ann recovered enough to exclaim,

"The child's possessed!"

Immediately every eye was focused on her, but for once she did not seem to drink in the attention like a flagon of her favourite brew. Her finger shook as she pointed at babe and mother, Hunith looking as Balinor felt; too shocked to be properly angered by the words. "His eyes, they were _gold_ , just now! I saw them!"

Fear burned like icy fire through his veins. This couldn't be happening. It was impossible; even the great sorcerers of legend displayed no sign of magic until after living to see at least three Samhains.

Met with a sea of skeptic female faces, Old Ann rounded on Catrin, "Tell them! You saw it too!"

The red-haired mother's eyes flickered to Hunith's uncertainly. Hunith clutched the baby closer, as though fearing he would otherwise be snatched straight out of her arms. "I… I saw…" she stuttered, still looking at Hunith, "His eyes were opening, and then… it was when the door opened, I'm sure it was just the light's reflection."

She didn't sound sure.

Balinor ordered his frozen limbs to move, crossing the room in long strides. He peered into the scrunched up face of his son, where bleary eyes were gazed up in a daze. "His eyes are blue," he said, the ice in his veins warming just a bit in pure relief.

As though he had pronounced a solemn judgement on a grave matter, the tension in the room relaxed. Quite a few reproachful looks were aimed at Old Ann, and the various women clustered around to see the baby, giving loud insistent exclamations of what a lovely boy he was as if to erase their moment of doubt.

Hunith and Balinor didn't look or speak to each other until the others left. Only then did he look down, where his son was still protectively clutched to Hunith's chest. Her eyes wavered in uncertainty when they met his. "You said your people's gifts don't manifest until puberty."

It was more question than statement, begging for reassurance he wasn't sure he could give. "There have been cases where an extremely gifted child develops a particular skill before then. But never this young. I've never seen anything like this, I've never even _heard_ of anything like this!"

"We don't know that his eyes did turn," she argued with a determination that would have been more comforting if it didn't sound like she was insisting on what she wanted to think. "It could have been a trick of the light, like Catrin said."

The baby's eyes were widening now, adjusting to the dim lighting of their shuttered cottage. It was closer to the darkness of the womb than the sun's glare had been. Balinor's ankles twinged where the door hit him, and he could still see Catrin and Old Ann's simultaneous fearful reaction.

He felt like a shard of ice was lodged in his heart. He was torn between what a fantastic coincidence it would be for two people to see eyes glow gold when a mysterious event occurred and how unbelievable it was that a newborn not ten minutes old was capable of magic. He wanted to believe the first explanation.

Because if the baby's eyes did gleam gold, it would be his fault, his cursed blood that condemned his son to a lifetime of knowing nothing but fear and hiding.

Hunith took his hand, guiding it to lie on the baby's head. It felt soft and damp, and it was so tiny he could wrap his entire hand around it. She said in her healer's voice, the one she used when she gently but firmly insisted on nothing less than complete obedience. "We'll watch him, and if we see any signs ourselves then we'll cross that bridge then."

She held out her arms, carefully transferring their son to his. He felt so fragile, and all Balinor could think was that he needed to be protected, from the entire world if necessary. "For now, I think it's time you meet your son."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Hours became days, which became weeks, and when Merlin's eyes remained blue the ice in his heart began to thaw. Life continued as though Old Ann's awful declaration never happened.

Though he knew it was something every parent said, he truly felt Merlin was the best baby they could have asked for. He hardly ever cried, and even when he did he quickly quieted with a feeding time or nappy change. When those didn't work, a lullaby soothed him into a deep restful sleep in one of his parent’s arms.

Hunith always sang the same one to him, a low soothing tune that lulled like the sea it described. It was a song her mother sang to her, and being only eight when she lost her she guarded this memory preciously.

_Hush, the waves are rolling in_  
White with foam, white with foam.  
Father toils amid the din  
But baby sleeps at home.

The song was nostalgia itself; sweet and loving, but also a touch sad. Nothing was eternal, and just as her mother had been taken from her so one day the veil of death would come between her and her son, leaving only memories. This thought made Balinor strain to think of songs from his mother to pass on, but unsurprisingly there were none that wouldn't raise the suspicions of the villagers over why he was singing in the Old Tongue.

For the first decade of Balinor's life his mother only spoke to him in the Old Tongue, and his father only in the Common Tongue, until Balinor could switch fluidly between both. It was a system he had always taken for granted he would use with his own children, but like all his fondest childhood memories – legends and prophecies, watching his parents do magic solely for his own amusement and slowly learning to do it himself, being ten feet off the ground atop the back of a majestic creature of magic – it was not something he could carelessly share with his own child.

_Someday,_ he thought while listening to Hunith sing her mother's song to their son, _someday, when he's old enough to know how to keep secrets, I'll share everything I can with him._

But it would never be the same. Merlin would never know dragons as anything more than stories from his father and the dozens of different dragon-themed wooden toys that Balinor had begun carving as soon as they returned home from that debacle with the bounty hunter. No matter how enthralled he was with them, he'd never meet a dragon in real life. Likewise, there would be no trove of oral knowledge gleamed from various relative's lifetimes of experience, only his father and what he knew from his short score-and-a-quarter years.

_Hush, the rain sweeps o'er the knowes_  
Where they roam, where they roam.  
Sister goes to seek the cows  
But baby sleeps at home.

There would be no clans of dragons and dragonlords for Merlin; his only kin were his mother and father. But when Hunith's voice sang beside him in their bedroll, the baby sleeping between them, he thought that just the three of them could be enough.

Merlin seemed happy enough, from the little Balinor could tell of interpreting newborn moods. He grasped his parents' fingers when offered them, and brought his closed fist to his body, drifting off to sleep in the arms of one while holding the finger of the other. He spent most of his day in peaceful sleep, and even when his parents were too tired or occupied to sing him his lullaby he fell asleep just to the sound of the wooden wind chime Balinor made shortly before his birth. While he dreamed a reflex smile flittered across his face, even though he was still too young to smile when awake. Quite a few of Hunith's friends told them how envious they were of his good temper when they came to see how she was doing with her firstborn.

During the intermittent period between naps, Merlin was as curious as anyone who could barely move his limbs could be.

One evening, after a day working in the fields, Balinor was idly pushing the mobile of wooden flying dragons above his cradle so that it went in circles. Merlin followed the movement in fascination, his eyes tracking one particular dragon, his whole head bobbing in circles. Then he changed his gaze to another, still following the movement as though spell bound.

He raised his skinny little arms with his fingers curled in a fist and tried to bat at them. Unfortunately for him, it was out of reach of his short arms. Balinor smiled as he flicked it for him again.

There came a knock at the door just then, and he went to answer it. It was Old Ann, being just as pushy and annoying as she always was. Balinor had disliked her from the moment he arrived in Ealdor and she acted like she was entitled to know everything about him, from the status of his love life to what foods he liked to where he was from. He hadn't thought the bored old gossipy busybody could do more to make him dislike her after spilling everything she knew about him to a bounty hunter, but pronouncing his son as hell spawn was just about the worst sin she could have committed.

Ever since that incident she had been trying the patience he barely had for her. She would slow down near the cottage window, peering through with her beedy eyes as though hoping to catch the baby mid-transformation into a terrifying monster. Or else she would knock on the door with some paltry excuse and try to crane her neck around him to see inside. He had no idea how Hunith still dealt with her as though she was mildly amusing if irritating in her intrusive tendencies.

Today as she gave some made up medical complaint her eyes darted beyond Balinor as she asked in an overly casual manner whether Hunith was in. He moved to block the doorway.

“No, she isn’t,” he replied curtly, as if the old crone didn't already know that.

“That’s no matter, dear, I’m in no rush. I’ll just rest my poor old aching feet inside a mo’ while I w- ”

“No,” he shot back without a care for how rude he was being. “I’ll send Hunith over when she gets back. Now get out.”

“Well I never - !” Old Ann squawked, and argued back until his head ached from the sound of her wheezy high voice, but in the end she was a decrepit old woman and there was nothing to she could do to force her way inside if he chose to block the door, so begrudgingly she left.

Balinor shut the door and massaged his temples, trying not to think that he'd just added another black mark to his page in the books of the most irritating yet mysteriously most heeded person in the village. Maybe he should be trying to get on her good side to make her less inclined to spread malicious gossip about him, but it took all his willpower just to resist the urge to slam the door in her face.

Looking up, his brow creased as he saw the mobile was still spinning above Merlin, when with no one to push it it should have slowed to a stop. Was it actually going faster? Ice ran in his veins once again, and he crossed the room in long strides, looking into the cradle with trepidation.

Two innocent golden eyes blinked up at him, tracking the movements of the still spinning mobile.

The sound of the door opening came from behind him. He snatched Merlin up, holding him protectively with his head pressed against his chest to hide the condemning glow.

"I'm home!" Hunith called cheerfully, and he could breath again.

He strode over to shut the shutters, and beckoned her to the centre of the cottage where their voices wouldn't carry through the walls. Hunith instantly looked wary; doubtlessly remembering the previous occasions they needed their conversation to go unheard.

She came immediately, depositing the full pitcher of water on the table on her way, and glanced anxiously over him and Merlin, whose eyes were blue once again as though they'd never glinted an impossible colour at all. But he knew what he'd seen, and tersely told her of it.

Even in the darkened room, he could see how she paled. "What are we going to do?"

And that was just the question, wasn't it? What could they do? Merlin was far too young to understand what words were, never mind listen to them. How could they keep him from revealing that force which flowed so strongly through him it manifested so young?

Rage filled him, clouding his eyes so that he could barely see Hunith's horrified face. In any other era such prodigious talent would be cause of celebration, not panic. Even when Balinor was young and his people were mistrusted, at least no one would have looked at an infant and proclaimed his death sentence. At least there would have been clans to value such a promising young addition and eagerly watch his growth, aiding in any way possible. Merlin would have been revered, but all because of Uther Pendragon he would instead be shunned, hunted, made to live in fear and hiding…

Hunith's face, still patiently waiting for his answer, snapped him away from his dark thoughts. Her eyes swam with fear; she didn't know what to do and was looking to him for answers. Guilt stabbed at him; it was unfair that she should have to go through this, when she would have nothing to do with sorcery if not for him.

How could he tell her that he was as lost as she was? That he had no magic solution to their unprecedented problem? Everything he knew about controlling magic he'd been taught, and he had no idea how to impress those teachings on one so young.

"I don't know," he said heavily, shifting Merlin when he began to fidget. "I haven’t the faintest idea. This is only the beginning; magical power grows with age. But I can't teach him control until he's old enough to follow instructions. And there's nothing I know of that can suppress his magic without harming him."

Hunith bit a piece of hair as she thought, chewing on it without noticing. Merlin whimpered in his arms, perhaps sensing the distress of the two people he looked to to give him comfort and security. Balinor rubbed his back and muttered soothing nonsense, trying to be comforting when the world was falling apart around them.

"We'll just have to keep him out of sight until he's old enough to learn control," Hunith said at last, in the firm voice she used to reassure others and herself at the same time. "We'll keep him inside and if anyone comes by, we'll keep them away from him."

He didn't say _That's easier said than done_ because she already knew it. Anyone could knock on their door at any time of day, asking Hunith for help with some complaint. What if one of them saw something so obviously magical it could not be explained away?

Balinor was not a good liar; it was a fact he acknowledged about himself and generally saw as a good trait, but in recent years it caused him trouble. If he practiced in advance he could deceive well enough, but making up falsehoods on the spot was not his strong point. How would he explain shapes in the fire, or floating objects, or toys changing colour? How many times could they pass off the glow in Merlin's eyes as the reflection of the sun?

He nodded, because it was all they could do. She held out her arms and he passed her the baby, his arms feeling empty and useless without Merlin's light weight. She held him like Uther's men were waiting outside their door and she would have to fight to keep him. Softly, she began his lullaby.

Neither of them made any move to open the shutters, so their home stayed dark.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

The most noticeable change in their day-to-day life beyond the permanent semi-darkness of their home came a few nights afterwards, when Merlin was fussing and Hunith began his lullaby to calm him. The first bar startled Balinor's drowsing brain into full consciousness. She was using the same hauntingly sweet melody, but no longer did she sing of various family members at work by the sea.

_Hush! the flames are closing in,_  
Ashes blown, ashes blown  
Little one flee away from them  
So baby stay at home.

"Those aren't the same words," he said, wondering why he couldn't be more articulate. The previous song had an innocence to it, and the lull brought to mind a safe place of peaceful simplicity. This version used the lull of the melody to draw him in, until he could feel the flames licking at his feet while he ran to safety.

She didn't answer the question he didn't ask, just kept singing her modified lyrics.

_Hush! the winds roar hoarse and deep_  
On they come, on they come!  
Kingdoms seek the helpless sheep,  
So baby stay at home.

Balinor shivered, even though it wasn't cool yet at this time of the year and he was under a warm blanket.

_Hush! the rain sweeps 'n' searches yet_  
Where they roam, where they roam.  
Stay with me, safe from this threat  
My baby sleep at home

And from then on, hidden warnings replaced innocent tales of the sea and family.

Despite their fears, until harvest season was over the other villagers were too busy to notice the changes in one of the families in their midst. Sequestered away, Merlin grew and learned. After a few pots and pans were found in the cradle, Hunith covered everything dangerous with spare shawls so that Merlin couldn't see them. It worked, and in time they stopped checking every few minutes to see if he was going blue because of something small he'd magicked over and put in his mouth.

Dark circles grew under Hunith's eyes as she tried to balance all her various tasks. Balinor was relieved when the harvest was in that he had more time to spend in the home, taking some of the burden off her shoulders and not having to worry each day that while he was gone someone had seen. His relief was tempered, however, when after overhearing a conversation in the street it became clear that more free time for the other villagers was not necessarily good.

A woman a decade older than Hunith, Eirda, was standing her turn by the well and talking with Hunith's friend Betrys. Betrys was saying she hadn't seen Hunith's baby since just after he was born, and Eirda replied, "Neither have I. It's strange Hunith always leaves him at home when she comes to get water, or hangs out her laundry."

"I've never seen her bring him anywhere," Betrys said with a thoughtful frown. "And even when I went to visit, she told me he was sleeping and wouldn't let me see him. Thing is, I could have sworn I heard him babbling right before I knocked."

Balinor didn't know what to do. They were getting too close to the truth -  he had to end this discussion - but _how_? If he stepped out from the building he'd ducked behind when he'd heard Merlin's name it would probably fluster them into stopping, but they'd just pick up their conversation again the moment he left, this time with his unprecedented eavesdropping to add to the list of things that were strange with his family.

"I've asked her a few times if she wanted me to come over and help," Eirda said, "but she always refuses even though you can tell she's getting worn out. And then there's what Old Ann is saying…"

"Surely you don't believe that tripe! Glowing eyes, floating toys… I think her mind's going."

Balinor's heart leaped into his throat. When had Old Ann had the opportunity to see inside their house? They were careful these days to have ready-made bottles of potions she needed so she couldn't worm her way inside, and their windows were covered. But then Hunith couldn't be in the cottage all day; there was water to fetch and animals to feed just as much now as before they had a baby, and it wasn't as if Merlin could be taken with her. It shouldn't surprise him that Old Ann had managed to sneak in during the times when no one was there to bar her entrance.

"But you can't deny something strange is going on," Eirda persisted. "Haven't you noticed how Catrin clams up whenever someone mentions Hunith? It's like trying to weasel words from a rock! And she let her little girl languish in bed with pox, "waiting it out" rather than going to Hunith for help. Think about it, when was the last time you saw them together?"

Balinor tried to remember the last time he had seen the only red-haired woman in the village. She was there at Merlin's birth, jerking away and stuttering out it was a trick of the light… and that was the last time he'd seen her. She hadn't been among Hunith's friends who came to coo over Merlin when he was a newborn.

But even if she knew it wasn't the sunlight she saw in Merlin's eyes, and even if that knowledge made her avoid them… she wasn't saying anything. If she'd endorsed Old Ann's proclamation it most likely wouldn't have mattered what colour his eyes usually were, but instead she denied it, and was still holding her tongue. He'd take his blessings where he could find them.

The two women's conversation meandered from his family, towards Catrin, and he slipped away. Hunith looked up from where she was preparing supper while singing to Merlin, and he put down the firewood he'd been fetching before recounting what he'd overheard.

Hunith immediately arranged for a visit with Betrys, saying it had been a while and she wanted to show her her baby. It was a daring move to make, but Hunith was a big believer in hiding things in plain sight. _People fear what they don't understand_ , she'd once said to him, and it was a fact that held true throughout his life when all else was inconstant. The rumours about Merlin were due to the mysteries surrounding him, and keeping him as an unknown factor would only feed them. Hopefully, a couple of quiet visits would be enough to quell the harmful gossip. Just before they went, Hunith infused water with essence of valerian and trickled it down Merlin's throat.

The number of women crammed into Betrys' home was alarming in its implications. Were rumours of the strangeness surrounding Merlin really that widespread? He almost thought every parent-aged woman in the village was there, but after scanning the gathered heads he saw blondes and brunettes but no red-heads. Catrin hadn't come. Beside him hurt flittered across Hunith's face, and he knew she'd noticed as well.

Betrys was the first to peer into Merlin's sleepy eyes, smiling brightly and cooing to the four-month-old. He gurgled a reply, seemingly too tired for his usual babbling, but turned his head to look at the crowd of gathered women. When most smiled – tentatively, but attempting nonetheless – he returned the favour with a huge gummy grin at the unprecedented amount of attention he was getting. A wave of _aww_ went through the women, and the smiles became much more genuine.

Merlin yawned, the valerian beginning to take effect, and leaned back against Hunith. She started humming the cautionary lullaby under her breath, and moved to sit in the center of the gathered women.

Balinor stood to the back of the room, ready to intervene if something happened, but the women seemed satisfied there was nothing demonic about the little bundle nuzzling up against Hunith. They chatted about miscellaneous things, and the visit passed without incident.

After they'd gotten home, Hunith in relief summarized it with, "Well, that went well."

And so with the exception of Old Ann and possibly Catrin, all the village women – and by extension, all their husbands – were quite taken with Merlin and unimpressed by Old Ann's continued insistence there was something wrong with him.

The weather become colder, and it seemed less strange that Hunith didn't want to take her baby out of the warm house, especially with Balinor home now to watch him. When someone came to her asking for herbs, he simply held Merlin against him so that no one could see his eyes. He would watch everything in Merlin's line of vision like a hawk, and if anything started to move then he hurriedly picked it up himself. Merlin didn't seem to mind whether things came to him by magic or not, just as along as he could play with them.

Old Ann, bereft of all other willing listeners, turned to a grouchy unpopular bachelor named Simmons, who was some kind of relative of hers. Balinor was unsure what they said between themselves, but as long as no one else believed them he wasn't overly concerned.

Merlin learned to sit up on his own, affording himself a better view of their home. He was delighted by what he saw, and everything made him laugh. When he wasn't laughing he was babbling away in baby gibberish, then looking at his father and mother expectantly as though waiting for them to take their turn in the conversation only he could follow. Soon, they had to spell his name whenever they didn't want his head to turn and his arms to stretch out, waiting to be picked up with a big smile on his face, giggling.

With these happy milestones came less happy ones, though, and the good turn of events went sour midwinter when he started fussing and refusing to take milk. Hunith dipped cloths in water left to chill outside and laid them on his gums, but that only granted temporary relief for the teething infant.

What was truly nerve-wracking wasn't the loudness of Merlin's screams, but their effect on their surroundings. The mid-winter sky deepened from a light overcast to an angry black, and during the worst of it when his face turned purple freezing rain fell in hailstones the size of silver coins.

People started coming to Hunith for bruise balm so often she took to keeping some ready-made to thrust into the hands of whoever came to the door. The first few times before she did so had been awful; they'd both had to scramble to hide the way nearly every object in their house had been knocked over or else shattered by the force of Merlin's screams at the disturbance of their knocking.

When after two weeks three pearly little milk teeth poked through his gums, the clouds lightened and the glow of the sun could be seen behind them. His relief at the calm was short-lived, however, when Old Ann triumphantly stood by the well and declared to all who came that the storm was an unholy work created by the changeling next door. Her barbaric folk remedies to "cure" Merlin made his skin crawl as she shouted her litany of abuse: hold it over the fire, hold it under water, beat it, pierce its skin with an iron blade, and so forth.

After he returned home with the water that day, he sloshed half of it when he slammed the bucket on their kitchen table. Hunith and Merlin looked over to him, wide-eyed, from their game of "Where's Stuffy?" Merlin's three-toothed smile fell, and Balinor struggled to keep his voice level so as not to frighten Merlin further when he told Hunith, "I don't care if she's bleeding to death on our doorstep, we can't let Old Ann in here anymore."

After he rehashed Old Ann's words, Hunith white-facedly agreed. Every day after that she would knock on Old Ann's door in the morning to see if there was anything she needed for the day, and would return looking worn out much later than the time it would take for Ann to answer that question. Whenever Ann came over later anyways, she was firmly sent home and told to wait until the morning from the other side of their closed door.

Old Ann was probably regaling the other villagers with awful explanations for Hunith's sudden coldness towards her, but Balinor hoped that in the recent vein of things such words would be regarded as malcontented gossip.

It all came to a head mid-January when Hunith came back from her daily check-up on Old Ann tear-faced. Balinor's heart jumped to his throat, before Hunith burst out despondently, "She's dead!"

Balinor didn't react for a moment, but his confusion must have shown on his face. Aside from her old age, Old Ann was perfectly healthy. "She was still in bed, and when I went to wake her she wasn't breathing. I'm supposed to be the healer, but I never even noticed there was anything wrong with her! I've been so cold to her recently, when she was only trying to help in her own misguided way. Now I'll never have a chance to make things better between us."

Balinor drew his wife into an embrace, rubbing her back as he muttered soothing reassurances to her about how Old Ann was old and there was nothing she could have done, these things happen eventually, and that she had been a good neighbour for years. All the while he wondered guiltily if it made him a horrible person to feel nothing but relief at the unexpected death of a little old woman.

He didn't attend her funeral, opting to stay home with Merlin instead, and so it was only when Hunith came back pinched faced that he heard what occurred there.

"It was after the service ended," she said bouncing Merlin up and down in her arms while she paced agitatedly. Merlin pulled at the skin of her thin face with spread out fingers, as though trying to bunch up her cheeks in her usual smile. "Everyone was filing away from the grave, and then suddenly Simmons bursts out that it wasn't natural, the way she died all of a sudden. He said Merlin cursed her for speaking out against him."

Balinor wondered why it felt so shocking that their troubles were not over, when he thought he knew that ignorance and fear were not just present in the heart of only one old woman. "Did anyone listen?"

Even though Hunith shook her head, his worry didn't go away. Blurred faces overlapped in his memory, looking at his kind with nothing but suspicion and quick to blame any ills they didn't understand on the people whom they also didn't understand. Kind strangers who offered him shelter for the night handing him his bag with faces of stone. Parents drawing away their children and hurling abuse – verbal or physical – at their retreating backs.

And Uther Pendragon, so driven by ignorant hatred he blinded himself to anything that didn't conform to the cleanly divided line between black and white he'd drawn for them all. His willingness to commit the most despicable acts under the banner of vanquishing evil was not such an anomaly as it seemed. In the end, Uther merely had the power to enforce his will; there were plenty of people within and outside his borders who'd eagerly leaped to their feet at his call to arms without caring a fig about who really killed Queen Ygraine.

There was darkness in every human heart, only waiting for fear to draw it out.

But despite his worries, the situation outside their walls seemed to have stabilized with Old Ann's death. Inside their walls, however, the situation was rapidly deteriorating from the fragile calm they'd reached.

In hindsight, he should have seen what the implication of Merlin's improving aptitude at games like peek-a-book and "Where's Stuffy" meant for his developing mind. Nonetheless, the first things he felt were befuddlement and confusion when one morning before dawn he was woken by blood-curling shrieks from inside the cradle.

Within seconds he was moving. He snatched the baby up, feeling warm liquid seep against his shirt as Merlin thrashed in his arms. Beside him he could hear Hunith fumbling frantically for a candlestick. With a whispered word he lit it, and she jumped forwards to aim the light on their still shrieking baby.

The front of Balinor's off-white nightshirt was flecked with red splotches, and a thin trail of blood trickled from Merlin's right hand. Hunith raced for the bandages and he gently pried open the tense fist, revealing a straight slice down the palm that could only have been made with a sharp edge. He held him still and whispered words of healing while Hunith cleaned the wound and wrapped it. Merlin's screams died down to soft whimpers as both methods took effect. He buried his face against Balinor's chest, fisting his shirt with his uninjured hand, tiny body trembling.

Hunith looked nearly as shaken as Merlin when she asked, "What happened?"

Worldlessly, Balinor shook his head to show he had no idea. Something glinting in the cradle caught his eye, and every muscle in his body stiffened at what he saw there. The meat cleaver lay on the thin bedding, surrounded by red speckles staining the sheet and red drops running down the sharp edge, pooling at the tip.

Beside him Hunith's breath hitched, and the candle light was abruptly taken away as she spun on her heel towards where all the objects deemed dangerous were hidden out of sight under the shawl sacrificed for the duty.

The shawl was pushed back like rumpled bedding someone had wriggled out of.

"Object permanence," Hunith said in horrible realization, a whispered self-reproach. "Merlin's old enough to know now that those things don't stop existing just because he can't see them."

Merlin's fist tightened at his name, recognizing it, and Balinor wondered at their foolish assumption that a cloth would continue deterring him from summoning the dangerous things beneath. They'd gotten careless; the months of living with the shawl as insurance against magical accidents gave them a false sense of security. Just because he wasn't capable of moving on his own or speaking yet didn't mean Merlin wasn't learning more about the world day by day. Of course one day he would realize that the unexplored things that disappeared under the shawl didn't disappear at all, they were still sitting there waiting for him to call over to play with.

"It could have been worse," that was not a relief, but a bleak statement of a terrible truth. It could have been much worse, fatal even.

If Merlin had chosen to summon one of the little objects and choked, they wouldn't have known anything was wrong until they woke after the sun rose to a cold body in the cradle. They were lucky he had taken an interest in the knife, and what did that even say about their lives when they were lucky that their seven-month-old sliced open his palm?

"We'll have to hide them better," Hunith said desperately, eyes open wide but without giving her more understanding of her surroundings.

"Where?" Balinor couldn't hide the bitterness in his voice. If they lived among people they could trust it would be easy enough; they'd keep it at a friend's house. They could even keep it in Old Ann's empty cottage, if they didn't have to worry about their unexplainable frequent trips back and forth rousing the suspicions of the other villagers so soon after Simmon's pronouncement. "Everything we have is kept in one room. Even if we had a locked box, how could we be sure that a couple months from now he won't be able to bypass the lock?"

"Then we'll get rid of it all." Her sleep dishevelled hair and wide eyes made her look a little mad. She was too frantic and sleep-deprived to think her words through. "Bury it in the woods."

"We can't live without knives to cut our food."

The truth of those words silenced her for a minute. An idea formed in his mind. "What about the animal shelter?"

Whereas most villagers took their animals into their homes at night, Hunith kept hers in a separate smaller building leaning against the main cottage. She'd explained to him that living in such close proximity to animals caused some of the most dangerous diseases, so after she'd returned to Ealdor one of the first things she did was make a permanent year-round structure to house them in. It was generally regarded as a tolerated quirk of Hunith's by the villagers, brought on by too much education and not enough time spent with good sensible farming folk during her impressionable years. No one would think anything of it if Hunith and Balinor entered and left the building several times a day; they did it anyways to feed and clean out the animals.

So they gathered up everything that was no longer safe in the same building as Merlin and deposited them in there, atop a barrel of feed. Balinor went to fetch wood for a proper shelf and worked on it outside, not wanting to draw Merlin's attention to his tools which were definitely not for summoning. Inside he could hear the soft sound of Hunith singing her lullaby, distracting Merlin from both his pain and thoughts of things no longer hidden under her shawl. The sooner he forgot they ever existed, the better.

The unspoken fear of the day when Merlin discovered the world outside their walls and even doors wouldn't protect him weighed on their minds. They could only hope that when that day came, he'd be old enough to understand what would be fun to play with and what would hurt him.

Outside, the seasons progressed until Balinor was taken away from them by planting season. The weather warmed, and already it must seem strange again that their shutters were constantly shut, but how could they open them when toys danced through the air in front of Merlin's glowing eyes?

Less and less people were coming to Hunith for help, perhaps deterred by the unavoidable unwelcoming air they carried towards everyone. Even Hunith shoved them out the door as quickly as she could, before Merlin lost interest in whatever distraction she'd given him. Their reduced number of visitors meant less chance of exposure, but he felt in his bones that the growing gulf between them and the rest of the village would bring troubles of its own in the future.

The weight of trying to protect his new family from people his wife counted as friends was crushing. But whenever it felt like he was slowly being suffocated, something would lift him out of the dirt where he was sinking to his knees.

As happened one typical morning when Hunith was holding Merlin while he was saying goodbye before heading to the fields. He gave her a peck on the lips then planted a kiss on Merlin's brow. She raised one of Merlin's hands, waving back and forth, as she cooed,

"It's bye-bye time. Time to say bye-bye to Daddy. Can Merlin say, 'bye-bye'?"

"Bye-bye," Merlin repeated, big blue eyes focused on his father. He echoed again, "Bye-bye."

The two parents exchanged a shocked look; Merlin hadn't responded to any of their promptings before. At his age, even a distinctive _mumma_ or _dada_ that wasn't part of a longer string of baby gibberish would be impressive.

Hunith laughed, tickling Merlin's sides and getting him to let out peels of giggling baby laughter. "Yeah! Who's a smart little man? Can you can it again? Say 'bye-bye Daddy'?"

"Bye-bye," Merlin repeated, smiling as though it was all a great game, looking up expectantly at his mother to now do her part.

By the time he came home in the evening Hunith had gotten Merlin to point to her and say triumphantly _Mumma!_ then wait to be lavished with praise. A few evening sessions later and he was exclaiming _Dada!_ From there the idea of one object meriting one string of sounds seemed to click. In the following weeks he labelled his stuffed toy frog _tahtah_ , his wooden dragon teether was also _dada_ which caused quite a few instances of confusion, the mash of porridge they gave him was _pohpoh_ , his rattle was _wahwah_ , and so forth for the ever increasing assortment of everyday objects in the life of Merlin that were deemed important enough to merit a special name. By the next start of the moon cycle he'd moved on to names for actions as well as concrete objects. If he wanted to be picked up he'd yell _up-up_ , to be put down he'd demanded _dow-dow_ , and for both eating and drinking he used _mm-mm_.

One day Balinor opened the door to see Hunith crouched a few feet from Merlin, determinedly holding onto his toy frog which was straining to leap out of her fingers and towards Merlin. She was saying in frustration badly hidden in an attempt at encouragement, "No, Stuffy doesn't want to go _there_ , he wants you to come _here_ , Merlin."

"Tahtah!" Merlin screamed tearfully. He was just as frustrated as his mother and made no attempt to hide it. His teary eyes fixed on Balinor's, as though imploring him to explain why his mother was being so inexplicably mean.

Loose strands of hair escaping from her headscarf fell limply across her face. She explained exhaustedly, "He's been doing so well at speech, I thought it was time he learned to crawl. I tried leaving a few toys just out of his reach, but, well…"

But Merlin didn't need to strain forwards to get his toys when it was easier to make them come to him instead.

The frog cleared Hunith's pinky, straining at the tips of her other fingers. With a triumphant noise from Merlin, it broke free and sailed straight into his skinny little arms. He hugged it to his chest, looking suspiciously at his mother as if she would sweep in and steal it from him.

Hunith fell back, wiping the hair out of her face and groaning with frustration. Both of them were a pitiable sight. "Maybe we should leave it for now," Balinor said cautiously, looking between the two red-faced members of his family collapsed on the floor. "He'll pick it up when he's ready."

"Will he?" Hunith asked rhetorically, elaborating in frustrated concern, "Babies crawl to explore their environment, to get at things they can't reach. Merlin doesn't need to move, anything he wants just comes to him!"

Out of everything they had feared, problems in Merlin's normal baby development hadn't been one of them. Now it seemed so obvious they couldn't believe it hadn't occurred to them he had no incentive to develop his motor skills.

In the next months they tried nailing his toys to the floor, placing him in crawling position, getting down on their hands and knees to teach crawling by example, and sitting just out of his reach stealing their hearts against his heartbreaking cries of _Mumma! Dada!_ His speech progressed at a phenomenal rate so that short sentences like _Mahwin do up_ or _Dada do bye-bye_ were normal, but he remained as immobile as ever.

Around the time of his first birthday, when they were beginning to despair of him ever learning to crawl, he proved their concerns right in an unexpected way.

He'd recently developed a habit of copying whatever they did. If Hunith rolled bread, he magicked over the rolling pin and made the same motions. If Balinor lit a candle, Merlin copied the motions as best his limited dexterity allowed. The only thing he didn't try and copy was the crawling.

While they were eating dinner, Hunith realized she had forgotten the salt and stood up to get some. Merlin mimicked her, falling head first from his chair in the uncoordinated motion. Balinor lunged forward, but Merlin froze mid-air half a foot off the ground, lowering slowly onto his stomach. He pushed himself into sitting position, accepting the strange occurrence with the easiness only small children have towards the new.

Hunith returned, raising her eyebrow at Merlin's position on the ground, apparently not having seen what happened. She set the salt on the table and turned to Balinor, probably intending to ask about it.

The salt shaker flew into Merlin's hands, distracting both Hunith and Balinor. Merlin reached towards the table and waved his arms impotently in the air when he could not reach it, spilling salt everywhere. Frowning, he looked around in intense contemplation, before his eyes settled on the chair he'd fallen off.

He grabbed the chair leg, and Balinor quickly put a hand on the seat to stop it from tipping. Merlin's face was screwed with effort as he pulled himself upright, teetering unsteadily on his feet as he looked over the top of the chair. He slammed the salt shaker on the seat, looking on proudly as it overbalanced and fell, sprinkling little white grains everywhere. Grinning his gap-toothed grin in pleasure, he let go of the chair leg and fell to his bottom.

Balinor grinned like a madman as he dusted the grains into his hand, and Hunith scooped Merlin up, rubbing their noses together while she showered him with praise. "Good boy, Merlin, good boy. Who's my smart baby? Who can stand up now?"

Merlin looked back and forth between them, obviously not expecting such an enthusiastic reaction. "Down! Mahwin do down!"

Hunith placed him back on the floor, and once again the salt shaker sailed into his hand. His gaze fixed on his parents, Merlin pulled himself up again, slamming the salt shaker onto his chair. His face shone as he bathed in their compliments, and he pulled himself up again, and again. Dinner lay forgotten on the table as they played the fun new game.

After settling in for the night, Hunith and Balinor spoke while Merlin lay sleeping between them. "It doesn't matter so much if he doesn't crawl, right?" she was saying, still excited by the day's milestone. "Pulling himself up is the first step towards walking, which is what he's really going to need to be able to do all his life."

Balinor murmured an agreement, and their conversation meandered, reflecting on all they'd been through in the past year.

It had been full of ups and downs, joy and anxiety, but Balinor wouldn't trade it for anything. It reminded him of climbing mountains. The trials of the journey up made standing on the peak so much more rewarding. He'd look back to where he'd come from which was smaller from afar and fading into the distance, and say to himself, _that's where I was then, and here I am now._

But the best part about standing at the summit wasn't the journey to get there, or the feeling of exhilaration at being there at last. It was seeing places he hadn't been before on the horizon and knowing that though there were more mountains to climb ahead just as he got through this one, so he could get through those still to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to hear Hunith's lullaby, google "Judy Collins - Gaelic Lullaby".
> 
> This chapter should be called "12 months in 9000 words or less!" Ugh.
> 
> To clarify, Merlin wasn't some angelic saint newborn who hardly cried because of the pureness of his heart. He didn't need to cry for everything because he could influence his environment in other ways.
> 
> This chapter took a lot of outside inspiration because I'm not a parent. So I'd like to acknowledge: babycentre.co.uk, a visit from my cousin, and the songs He's My Son by Mark Schultz and Cinderella by Steven Curtis Chapman.


	8. 0x08 - The Old and the New

The overcast sky was fluffy with an assortment of light grey and white, and even a few patches of blue. Balinor's gloves peaked out of the top of his pockets, not as needed as he thought when he set out in the early winter morning.  In his bare hands was a plain wooden box. He shifted it to one hand, and used the other to open the door to his cottage.

Pattering footsteps echoed on the wooden floorboards, and two little arms wrapped around his lower legs. "Daddy!"

Balinor ruffled the top of his son's hair, taking his hand and leading him to the centre of the cottage. He crouched down so he was at eye-level with Merlin and held out the box. The introduction of a new object immediately caught the toddler's attention. Hunith sank to her knees beside Merlin, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Merlin," she said, "Daddy's got a new toy for you. But if you want it, you have to promise to do what Daddy says, understand?"

Merlin nodded eagerly, "Yeh, I pwomih."

Though only a few months shy of being two-and-a-half, Merlin's cognitive abilities continued to far outstrip what was normal for a child his age. Not even a month ago he had mastered the alphabet, and could now write out not only his name but the names of his parents and all his toys. His counting skills weren't as impressive – only extending as high as the number of fingers on his hands – but he seemed to intuitively grasp the concepts of addition ("Twee tup Mummy! Tuppy and Dwaggy wanna dwink too!") and subtraction (To explain why he put back his bowl at supper time a week ago, "My tummy go oowie. Onwy two bow, no need twee.")

It was because of these impressive mental leaps that Hunith and Balinor had decided to try a lesson that normally would not stick with such a young child.

"There are three rules for this toy, and if you can't follow them you can't keep it," Balinor warned. "Rule 1: When you're not playing, the toy goes in this box. This is a very special box, Merlin, and it has a very special name. It's called 'Control'. When you're done playing, the toy needs to go back in Control, alright?"

Merlin nodded, looking impatient, and Balinor continued. "Rule 2: You can only play with the toy if you ask Mummy or Daddy first. If you don't ask, then you can't play."

Merlin nodded his agreement again, though Balinor knew that this was probably the rule that that would give him the most difficulty and was the least likely to be followed. Nonetheless, he continued, "Rule 3: If you hear a knock, you need to put the toy back in the box right away."

When Merlin nodded again, Balinor at last lifted the lid on the wooden box, holding it open at its hinges so the little boy could see what was inside. Merlin's eyes lit up, and Balinor explained, "This toy also has a special name. Its name is 'Magic'."

"Maggy," Merlin said excitedly, reaching forwards before suddenly stopping. Despite his father's skepticism, apparently Rule 2 was not quite forgotten yet, because he turned to Hunith and asked, "Tan I pway?"

Hunith's chin had barely dipped in its nod when Merlin's hand shot out and grabbed the new toy dubbed Maggy from its box. He held up the brightly coloured model dragon to his eye in wonder, never before having a toy that wasn't the colour of polished wood or faded cloth.

The dragon's colour shifted from a forest green to a sky blue, making Merlin gasp and eagerly hold it out to both parents with wide eyes, "Wook! Wook! It do-ed bwue!"

"That's because Magic is a very special toy," Hunith said with a smile. "As long as you follow the three rules, you can play with him however you want." She hesitated, then said, "You can even make him fly."

Recently, they'd been working with Merlin on not making his toys fly. It was a disaster. Merlin didn't understand why it wasn't allowed, and short of pouncing on all his toys as they rose off the ground there was no way for them to stop him. In the weeks following the end of harvest when Balinor was home to bear witness to the tantrums and constant time outs, he and Hunith had come to the conclusion even their united two-against-one efforts would not be enough. They would have to compromise a little to motivate Merlin.

"But you can only play with Magic that way!" Hunith insisted, desperately. They were taking a large gamble on how far advanced Merlin truly was in his comprehension of what he was told. "Stuffy and the other toys still aren't allowed to fly!"

Already 'Maggy' was zooming circles around Merlin's head, making him giggle each time it came around. It was difficult to tell whether he'd listened to anything after receiving permission to play how he wanted to. The toy continued changing colours, going from blue to purple to red and so on, looping on the cycle Balinor had spelled it to follow.

After they let their son play for a while, Hunith discretely nudged him and glanced over to the door and back. When he nodded his understanding, she rose and crept to the door, careful not to let Merlin see what she was doing. Raising a fist, she loudly knocked three times.

Merlin continued playing, oblivious, and Balinor suppressed the urge to sigh. They knew it wouldn't be that easy, which was why they were introducing this all now, while Balinor was home during the day rather than waiting until Merlin was a bit older and he was called away to the fields again.

"Merlin," he said warningly. The toy dragon halted in its flight and Merlin's head swiveled towards him guiltily, not sure what he had done wrong but recognizing the tone. "Say Rule 3 to me."

"… Ahk bepore pway?" Merlin said hopefully, clearly either not having listened the first time or forgotten the rule in his excitement.

"When there's a knock, Magic needs to go in Control." Balinor repeated firmly.

The toy zoomed into Merlin's hands, and he clutched it protectively against him. "No wanna."

"You promised," Hunith reminded him. Merlin clutched the toy harder. "If you can't follow the rules, then you can't play with Magic at all."

Reluctantly, the toy rose in the air and fell in a sad arch into the box. Merlin stared at it with a scrunched up face, a hair's breath away from a tantrum.

Balinor counted to fifty in his head, and then said, "Do you have a question you want to ask me?"

"Tan I pway?" Merlin asked right away, not entirely forgiving them for interrupting his playtime but perking a little at the thought that he could get back to it.

"Yes you may," Balinor said, holding out the box.

From there weeks and months passed, slowly transitioning Merlin into following the rules revolving around his new toy while both parents were around to enforce them. As they predicted, Rule 2 was the one he did worst on. After a few weeks of working on Rule 3 he seemed to gain confidence that he would get Maggy back shortly after having to give him up, and from there though he still did it grudgingly it took less fighting on the part of his parents. Rule 1 didn't give him much trouble, as Hunith had been after him to put his toys away for months and months, though without the motivation of a specially named box Merlin was still as messy as a normal toddler with his other toys.

In order to enforce Rule 2, however, one of them had to keep the box dubbed Control pinned against their bodies to force Merlin to ask. Before he was allowed to have his new favourite toy, he had to recite his abridged version of the three rules.

It was an exhausting winter, full of two-year-old tantrums on regular two-year-old woes as well as playtime rules which must seem completely arbitrary to Merlin. They saved tales of the evil men in red who would catch him and make him hurt as a consequence of leaving the house, preferring to enforce the rules of what to do and not do within the house with less terrorizing tactics.

Though as the months passed and Merlin slowly adjusted to the 'only Maggy can fly' rule as well as the three rules governing playtime with Maggy, still nearly once a week they'd look up and something would be floating in the air, crashing down guiltily as soon as Merlin saw they'd noticed.

It was a vast improvement from when their cottage was constantly full of items indiscriminately flying about, but it was not nearly good enough for them to take him where other people could see if he slipped up. Still, when planting season took Balinor away he held less trepidation towards what went on in their home than the previous year.

Every spare moment he had, Balinor spent cutting up wood into identical sized tiles and carving different patterns in to the back of each one. While doing this, he helped Hunith in teaching Merlin the words to his lullaby, patiently going through the first verse countless times each evening while Merlin stumbled along after him. Soon, Merlin could lisp his way through the first verse with no help, and they were moving on to the second, and then the third.

They were also teaching Merlin games meant to challenge both his mind and body. They'd line up every spare bit of cloth on the floor in mazes, and get Merlin to navigate his way through without bumping into any of the lines. If he touched a bit of cloth, then he had to freeze until he'd counted to ten and back, or recited his ABCs. Then he had to start over from the beginning.

Balinor finished the first set of tiles, and introduced Merlin to Pairs, where he had to remember where the matching picture was when all the backs of the tiles looked the same. Whenever the frustration of this game looked liable to lead into a tantrum, they switched this up with Statue Tag. This had Merlin running around the house until he was tagged and had to become a statue. This led into the introduction of the game of Imagination, where Merlin had to mimic whatever his parents told him to. They started with more "fun" things like animals, then moved on to more boring things like chairs.

Though Merlin doubtlessly saw all these as mere entertainment, what his parents were actually trying to do was build up his focus and concentration. If Merlin had better physical and mental control, they hoped, he might be able to transfer his new skills to controlling his magic.

The results were interesting, to say the least. Merlin had grown from a largely immobile baby to a very uncoordinated toddler. In the maze game he'd often trod on the fabric, which would move itself out of his way while he glanced around guiltily to see if his parents noticed. His penalty frozen time was doubled whenever he did this. In Statue Tag he often couldn't balance properly, and would start to fall before stopping just before he hit the ground, impossibly righting himself at the last minute.

In the mental games he had less opportunities to cheat, but Balinor had caught him more than once raising the precise tile he was looking for with his mind rather than flipping over every one individually. This also merited him a time out.

The most unusual uses of magic by far came through Imagination, when Merlin would sporadically go green like a frog or grow horns like a goat. This always had his parents in a panic, as Balinor was forced to rack his memory for a reverse spell while Hunith tried to distract Merlin from the strange words his father was muttering over him.

They'd both agreed a three-year-old was far too young to learn any proper spells, whether he had the ability to or not. Not only was there a risk of exposure if Merlin performed them in front of the wrong people, but his toddler lisping way of mispronouncing half his words could have disastrous implications for something as subtle and nuanced as spell casting.

Once harvest was over and Balinor was home again for long periods they introduced Merlin to the game of Hide-and-Seek. Unlike the great outdoor adventure it had been in Balinor's childhood, their cottage wasn't large enough for Merlin to hide in so they improvised by hiding his toys in various places. They'd have Merlin close his eyes and recite his ABCs and count to 20 – he'd recently upped the number he could count to to include his toes – then have him go look for his various hidden toys. Once he got the idea of the game, they encouraged him to hide the toys himself, praising him whenever it took them an especially long time to find them.

They also started bringing animals into their home and telling Merlin he had to hide Maggy from them, as Maggy was "just for Mummy and Daddy and Merlin to see." Merlin thought this a great new game, scrambling whenever he heard the door opening to stuff Maggy in his special container Control. He got a piggyback ride whenever he managed it without "making Maggy fly in" before the animals got through the door.

Around his half birthday, he and Hunith took Merlin deep into the woods, telling him they were going to play an advanced version of hide-and-seek. The longer he could go without being caught, the more Merlin was rewarded. This became a daily activity, as he and Hunith tried to both acclimatize Merlin to the world outside their home and simultaneously teach him to be cautious of it.

Spring came again, and Balinor was taken by the planting season, but this year he had very little worries. Merlin was old enough now to have a better idea of what he was and wasn't allowed to do in certain situations and his magic was much more reeled in than the years before.

He was even old enough to begin questioning the things he had been taught all his life.

"Why do I have to tay at home?" he asked at the dinner table one May night, startling both parents.

"Because it's not safe outside," Hunith said, sending a look to Balinor for back up.

"Why?" Merlin asked simply, his tiny brow wrinkling in thought. "When we go pway hide-and-teek in da wood, I don' tee any fwame or wind or wain coming to get me."

"That is because you're hiding," Balinor said slowly, trying to tell the truth in a way that Merlin could understand. "When you're home, you're hiding too. Remember when you hid Stuffy in Mummy's saucepan, and closed the lid so we couldn't find him?"

Merlin nodded, slowly, and Hunith reached out her hands to take both his and Merlin's, squeezing lightly. "That's you, sweetie. When you're at home, you're hiding like Stuffy in the saucepan. That's why none of the bad things can find you. And when you go out with Mummy or Daddy, we keep you safe."

"Becauh I'm hiding?"

"That's right."

"But why do I have to hide?"

Balinor returned Hunith's squeeze, praying to anyone listening for the right words to say. "Because of magic."

"Maggy?" Merlin said, eyes wide with astonishment. "Why? I fowow aw da wuwe!" To accentuating his point, Merlin started listing them dramatically while pointing with his right index finger to the appropriately numbered finger on his left hand. 'One: keep Maggy in Contwow when not pwaying. Two: Ahk Mummy or Daddy before pwaying. Twee: when tomeone knock on or open da door, Maggy go in Contwow."

He looked up accusatively at his parents, holding up the three fingers he'd counted off as proof. Hunith stood up from the table, and brought back the box they'd told Merlin over a year ago was called Control. Opening the lid, she pulled out the toy they'd called Magic and held it out in front of Merlin. "Why is Magic special, Merlin?"

"Becauh he pwetty." As Magic turned from a purple dragon to a red one, Merlin pointed and said, "Tee? Wike now!"

"And none of your other toys change colours, do they?" Hunith pressed softly, eliciting a giggle of _nooo!_ "Or any of Mummy's things, or Daddy's things. Does anyone or anything besides Maggy change colours, Merlin?"

"No!" Merlin said, another round of giggling at what seemed like a repeated question, stopping in confusion when Hunith shook her head.

"Think harder," she encouraged. "Who else can change colour, Merlin?"

Merlin frowned in concentration, puzzling for a moment. The toy dragon changed from red to green, and Merlin's face lit up in memory. "Me! I can! I went gween when I was being Tuffy!"

"And that was you doing magic," Balinor added. Merlin glanced over at the toy, clearly confused. "Your toy is not the only Magic. You, Merlin, are Magic too."

"I'm Maggy?" Merlin said, non-comprehending. It was like he had just been told the ceiling was actually made of cheese, not straw, and instantly believed it because it was his father who told him but couldn't see how it could be true.

"You can change colours," Balinor explained as simply as he could. "Anything that can change colours is magic. And when you make things fly, that's magic too. And when you stop yourself from getting hurt when you fall, that's also magic."

This was clearly a lot for Merlin to take in, but Balinor continued because this was something that Merlin needed to understand. He'd repeat it like a creed every day if he had to. "And just like Maggy needs to be hidden from the people who come to the door, you need to hide _your_ magic from everyone except Daddy and Mummy."

"Or da fwame and wind and wain will get me?" Merlin asked, trying to fit the new information into what he already knew of the world, recalling his earliest memories of a song that both comforted and warned.

Hunith nodded, choking a little when she confirmed, "Or the flames will get you."

The candle in the middle of the table suddenly went out, sending the shuttered room into darkness.

Balinor squeezed Merlin's hand. "But Mummy and Daddy will protect you, even if the seekers find your magic."

Merlin flung himself off his chair, into his father's arms as he sniffed and cried. "I don' want dem to find me!"

Hunith's chair scraped against the floor, and Balinor felt her stand beside them, smoothing out Merlin's hair. "They won't," she assured him, "You're good at hiding, and every day you get better and better. One day, even Mummy and Daddy won't be able to find you! Until then, we'll make sure no one else can find your magic."

The candle relit, and Merlin looked up teary eyed from Balinor's now damp tunic. He held out his hand. "Pwomih?"

Hunith wrapped her hand around Merlin's, and Balinor wrapped his hand around hers. Together, they shook it. "Promise."

And although that settled Merlin for the moment, the future loomed over them, dark and uncertain.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

After the day when Merlin discovered that he was Magic and had to be hidden just like his toy, Hide-and-Seek became his new favourite game. He insisted on always being the hider, making his mother and father search all over the house for various items he'd hidden. Sometimes during the day Hunith took him to hide himself in the woods, if she finished her chores early.

After a couple of weeks and lots of questions about what was and wasn't magic, Hunith and Balinor uncovered the windows for the first time in nearly four years. The next day in the fields some of the other villagers gave Balinor a few curious looks, but no one said anything. The glare Simmons gave him was dark, though, and he could see him whispering to the others whenever Balinor was inconveniently too far away to hear. Most of the time he got brushed off, but more people than Balinor would have liked looked as though they were considering whatever Simmons was saying.

When he told Hunith after Merlin had gone to sleep for the night, she gave a suggestion almost identical to the one she gave when Old Ann had first stirred up the villagers three years before. "It's Merlin's birthday in a few weeks. Let's throw a party."

The next day, they closed the shutters during breakfast. "Merlin, in a few weeks you're going to be four," Hunith began smiling as warmly as she could. "How would you like to invite everyone over to have fun with?"

"No," Merlin said with no hesitation, throwing his parents through a loop. He didn't even look up from his porridge. "I'm hiding."

"Your hiding your _magic_ , sweetie," Hunith coaxed. "That doesn't mean _you_ have to hide."

"When people come over, you hide Maggy from them. But you don't hide yourself, do you?" Balinor added.

"Yeh," Merlin said immediately. "I hide in da laundwy bahket."

Balinor glanced over to Hunith, who was home during the day with Merlin when he was not. She looked as surprised as he felt. Merlin never used to hide from visitors. "You hide in the laundry basket?"

"Dey don' find me," Merlin said, looking very pleased with his cleverness.

Balinor had to resist the urge to sigh. Yes, they wanted to teach Merlin caution, but… "You only have to hide your magic, not all of you."

"If dey don' find me, dey don' find my magic." Merlin insisted stubbornly in childish logic, frowning into his spoonful of porridge. Some trickled down his chin, and he deftly swiped it up with his tongue. Merlin knew already not to let any food, no matter how little, go to waste.

Balinor wondered where the little baby who spilt salt all over his chair and then looked up for his parents' approval went.

And though they coaxed and wheedled, Merlin was adamant that he didn't want to invite anyone over for his birthday. At last they stopped asking, and told him that they'd already invited everyone to come see him, whether he liked it or not, and he wasn't allowed to hide anything other than his magic. Merlin sulked and refused to speak to them in the weeks leading up to the party, after several days of crying and fussing hadn't made them change their minds.

On the day of Merlin's birthday, only Herleva, her young son Will, and Betrys came. Balinor and Hunith had decided it would be better not to overwhelm their less-than-happy son with too many visitors at once.

The party started awkwardly, with Herleva and Betrys both fawning over the birthday boy who was decidedly pouty. When Merlin extended his passive-aggressive muteness to the visitors, they slowly drifted away with their questions unanswered, coming over to chat with Hunith and Balinor. Herleva pushed Will towards Merlin, suggesting in a way that was really ordering that they could play together. Neither child looked terribly happy with this "suggestion."

Hunith and her friends chatted about their children and various other topics, catching up in a way that she hadn't had a moment to do in a good long while. Balinor sat silently, half-listening to the women talking, half-watching Merlin and Herleva's boy.

Herleva's boy quickly became bored, fidgeting and squirming while Merlin sat sulkily on the floor with his arms crossed over his chest. Will stood up, circling Merlin curiously and waving a hand in front of his face. When the only reaction he got was a jutted out jaw, Will poked Merlin in the chest experimentally. Merlin batted his hand away in annoyance.

Though Balinor could only see a small part of Will's face, he thought there was a giant grin breaking across it. Will leaned over, deliberately poking Merlin again. And again and again and again. Merlin stood up, throwing his hands in the air in defeat, but still refused to speak. Balinor saw Will's lips move, but couldn't hear him over the women's chatting.

Merlin picked up Stuffy, then pointed to Will as though he expected to be understood. Will looked confused, and in response Merlin marched forwards, grabbing Will's hands and using them to cover his eyes.

For the first time in weeks, Merlin broke his silence, saying something Balinor didn't hear but could deduce from context was probably _count_. Will turned his back so he was facing the wall, eyes still covered, while Merlin quickly ran across the room and hid Stuffy under the counter in Hunith's lidded saucepan. Then he ran back to Will, so that when Will turned around he jumped in surprise at Merlin's proximity. Merlin held up his empty hands, and said something.

Will's eyes immediately started sweeping the room, and he moved around the room pushing the scarce furnishings aside as he looked. Merlin leaned against the wall, looking smug. Will continued to search the room, moving more things out of the way and looking in the cupboard a total of four times, each time spending less and less time peering through. Eventually he threw his hands up in defeat, and Merlin skipped over to the cupboard and produced the raggedy stuffed frog out of the saucepan, making it take a flourishing bow.

Will snatched up the toy, and pointed Merlin towards the wall. Merlin covered his eyes and started counting.

The game went on until suppertime, when both boys were talking animatedly to each other, all grievances apparently forgotten during playtime. Under Will's gaze Merlin even responded somewhat shyly to Herleva's smiling questions, though he clammed up again at Betrys' slightly loud exclamations of what a sweet little boy he was.

All in all, by the time Hunith bid her friends a lengthy farewell full of hugs at the door, Balinor felt the evening had gone rather well. After the door closed, Balinor turned to Merlin and said, "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Merlin huffed, but shook his head in what looked like determined regret. He couldn't keep it up for more than a minute, though, before he broke and looked up hopefully. "Can Will come play again?"

" _May_ Will come play again!" Hunith corrected, recently having become a stickler for such distinctions. When Merlin repeated the correction, she said, "I'll go ask Herleva, she can't have gone too far yet."

The door closed behind her, and Balinor called Merlin over to help him clear the table. Glancing at the bucket of water, he saw there wasn't enough to fill the wash basin. Dumping the remaining water in and scraping over Merlin's stool, he handed him a bar of soap and told him he'd be right back.

Before Balinor reached the door, however, a knock came from the other side. Confused – had one of Hunith's friends forgotten something? – Balinor opened it.

On the other side was a young man with a pack slung over his shoulders who he knew for a fact didn't live in Ealdor. Though he was dressed like a peasant, the sun hadn't darkened his skin enough to be a farmer from a nearby village. He looked taken aback by the sight of Balinor, before his expression shifted into amiability with the fluidity of a serpent. "Good evening. Is Hunith home?"

"Who's looking for her?" Balinor asked distrustfully. He couldn't say quite what about the young man – barely more than a boy, really – put him on edge, except that no one's expression changed that smoothly, that fast unless they were accustomed to deceptions.

"An old friend," the man said with a winning smile that did nothing to warm Balinor to him. "And might I ask who you might be?"

Before Balinor could respond, he heard Hunith exclaim in surprised delight from further down the street. "Julian?!"

One of the man's eye muscles twitched. He smoothed his face before turning to greet her with the same smile he'd just given Balinor. "It's Julius, actually."

"Oh," Hunith laughed in slight embarrassment. Her voice carried closer; she was walking towards them. "Oops."

The stranger stepped back, and Hunith opened the door all the way, so that the three of them could see each other. Balinor glanced back and forth between Hunith and the other man, trying to recall from the stories of her past who he was.

Hunith raised a hand to smooth her escaping hair, tucking the loose strands behind her ear self-consciously. Gesturing with her hands, she said, "Where are my manners? Julius, this is my husband –"

"Keith," Balinor cut in, unsure which name she planned to give but wanting to make sure it was the safer one. Hunith's eyes widened slightly at the interruption, but she quickly regained her momentum and continued with, "Keith, this is one of Gaius' pupils, Julius Borden."

Balinor tried to recall the man from his own visits to Camelot, but continued to draw a blank. Borden extended his arm with the same plastered smile he had put on his face at the start of the encounter, and Balinor took it stonily, shaking once before letting go. "Pleased to meet you."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Hunith was quick to offer Borden their spare blankets and a place to stay for the night, glancing questioningly at Balinor to seek his agreement. What could he say against someone that Hunith knew and trusted, when he had nothing to argue with except gut instinct? It wasn't even as though his instinct was faultless; Uther had deceived him easily enough.

So Borden slept on the other side of the room from the family of three, while Balinor lay awake late into the night listening to the familiar breathing of his son and wife beside him and trying to ignore the unfamiliar breathing of the stranger across the room.

Breakfast was a tense affair. Merlin was clearly uncomfortable with the stranger living with them. Like a turtle that had poked its head out of its shell the previous evening and found the outside world marvelous but overwhelming, Merlin once again withdrew into himself and said nothing. He ate his porridge with a speed that made Hunith warn him he'd get hiccups and escaped the table without waiting to be excused, going off in a corner to play with his matching tiles.

Hunith tried to carry the conversation on her own, while Balinor sat in silence and watched the amiable newcomer. "How's Gaius?" she asked. "I haven't seen him since his fiftieth birthday."

"He was doing well, last I saw him," Borden said, his constant amiable grin sliding off his face at the end for a more serious look. "Of course, I had to leave Camelot in a bit of a hurry, so I can't speak for how he is now."

Hunith's face whitened slightly, and she asked as if she already knew the answer. "Why?"

"Got caught reading some books that should have been burned in the Purge," Borden said with a regretfulness that didn't match his flippant words. "What can I say? Being executed didn't really appeal to me. Afraid I might have left Gaius in a spot of trouble, though."

"I'm sure he's talked his way out of worse," Hunith said, face still white.

"Yes," Borden said, the smile returning, "Yes, Gaius is remarkably good at that, isn't he?"

"Why were you reading the books," Balinor butted into the conversation, surprising the other two adults, "if you knew they might get you and Gaius into trouble?"

Hunith gave him a reproachful, meaningful look, and Balinor remembered her policy on trusting in the intentions of others, no questions asked. It was a quality he admired in her, but hardly a trait he shared.

As if sensing this, something almost reptilian shifted in Borden's eyes, as if he'd made some decision about Balinor's personality and how he should respond to it. The smile vanished, replaced by a determined righteous look, "Some knowledge is worth the risk. Tell me, have you ever heard of the Triskelion of Ashkanar?"

A moleskin pouch hung heavy against his neck as Balinor lied curtly, "No."

A zealous, excited gleam entered Borden's eyes, and he continued in enthusiasm that seemed the most genuine emotion he'd yet displayed. "A relic of a wise king, who in his wisdom hide a treasure beyond treasure in his tomb," leaning forwards, glancing at the door and open windows, he whispered so lowly that Hunith leaned forwards as well to hear him. Balinor, who already knew what he was going to say, remained upright in his chair. " _A dragon's egg!_ "

Hunith's eyes widened, and she looked excitedly towards Balinor, her gaze faltering only at his continuing stony expression. Borden's gaze followed hers, a grin tugged at his lips nearly instantly smoothed away, but not before Balinor's peeled eyes saw it. Borden continued with a silver tongue, "The last hope for a once great and noble race. Wouldn't you say it is our sacred duty to bring this magnificent creature back into the world?"

"'Our'?" Balinor questioned softly, not letting any emotion show through. It was either bold of Borden to extend an induction into his personal quest to a stranger, or sly of him to think that the choice of words would pass Balinor by. "Why should we help you?"

Hunith looked completely shocked by this response, and though Borden's gaze and expression didn't falter Balinor was under the impression that this was noted by him too. "I don't ask for much," Borden said smoothly, his eyes never leaving Balinor's. "The Triskelion is split into three parts, and only once united will it lead the way to Ashkanar's tomb. I know where two are, but the other I only know the name of its guardian. I heard he lived near here, before his murder at the hands of a bounty hunter a few years ago. In fact, I know that Gaius sent him to you, Hunith," he nodded briefly in her direction, still looking at Balinor as though if he blinked he'd miss a vital clue. "The last dragonlord, Balinor."

The silence in the room was only broken by the flipping of Merlin's wooden tiles. Hunith looked between the two sitting tensely as though she was unsure of what to say. It was clear that this was not the direction she thought Borden was going in.

Balinor considered his options. He could feign ignorance, but even though Old Ann was no longer alive to pass on every piece of gossip to every poor sod who walked past her door it would be easy enough for Borden to ask around and fit the timeline of "Keith's" arrival to the dragonlord's. If the experience with the bounty hunter had taught him anything, it was that information passed along quicker than he could anticipate and he couldn't rely on the other man to have no knowledge of him before setting out to track him down.

Coming to a decision, Balinor said bluntly, "That's me." Borden almost looked surprised he had admitted it so easily, but Balinor wasn't finished speaking. "Whatever books you've been reading have misinformed you, though. The third of the Triskelion protected by my kin fell with them, lost for all eternity. I don't have it."

Something indistinguishable flickered in Borden's eyes. "Is that so?" he said with a rueful smile, glancing down in disappointment.

"Sorry to ruin your quest," Balinor said without managing to make himself sound sorry at all, "but it's hopeless now that one of the pieces had been destroyed. You'd best give it up."

Borden nodded, not looking up. "Of course, you're right." He rose from the table. "Excuse me, my business is finished here."

"But you're not even finished breakfast!" Hunith protested, rising as well.

Borden gave her a mournful half-grin. "I'm afraid I'm no longer hungry." Crossing the room to grab his pack, he said, "Uther may still be searching for me; I won't burden you and your family any longer with the danger of harbouring me. Thank you for your generosity in letting me stay the night."

He and Hunith exchanged several more goodbyes and protestations before he at last stepped out the door. Hunith stood there, watching him turn left out their door in the direction of the blindingly red-orange morning sun, looking stunned by the sudden turn of events.

She whirled on her feet, shutting the door and moving to shut the window shutters – something they should have done before embarking on a conversation of dragon eggs and dragonlords. Glancing over to the corner where the tiles had gone silent, Hunith suggested in a way that was not a suggestion, "Merlin, would you be a dear and go get the eggs and milk?"

Merlin didn't say a word as he took his mother's hint, gathering the basket and bucket. He glanced once over his shoulder before going out to the animal shelter, looking worriedly from parent to parent.

Only after the door had shut and Merlin's light footsteps receded did Hunith hiss, "What on earth was that?"

Balinor said nothing, and she continued a touch louder, "After all you've told me about your kin, you think you'd be happy to meet someone else who shares your love for them. Why were you so rude?"

"Didn't anything about him strike you as…" dishonest? Calculated? Shifty? Snakelike? "…odd?"

"Julius is a lovely boy," Hunith protested angrily, "and he's one of Gaius' pupils! I know you have problems trusting strangers, Balinor, and after what you've been through I can't blame you, but he was _not_ a stranger. I know him, and he didn't deserve that treatment!"

Balinor took a moment to gather his thoughts. "Perhaps," he allowed. Just as he couldn't bring himself to see the world through Hunith's rose-tinted eyes where people in general meant well, so she couldn't bring herself to look through his jaded ones where kinds amiable faces were mere facades. Perhaps that was why they worked so well together; their opposing natures balanced them out. But sometimes opposites clashed instead of complimented. "But I couldn't take the chance."

Hunith took a deep breath, looking as though she was biting down a retort. He could see her lips moving silently – a habit he didn't think she was aware of – her eyes closing to half-lids as she counted. When _twenty_ passed her lips, she looked calmer, though still with ire not entirely missing in her voice. "Putting your attitude aside," she said like it physically pained her to get the words out of her throat, "are you not the least bit interested in the chance to recover a member of your kin? Even if one of the pieces of this Triskelion is missing, perhaps if you went with Julius to search out the other two…"

Balinor shook his head. "The egg has lain in that tomb for four hundred years, what good would it do to take it out now? Uther is still sitting on the throne, and I doubt his stance on dragons has changed since I last set eyes on him. To hatch the egg now would merely be to hand it a lifetime of hiding and fear."

He thought of Merlin, handed down distorted lullabies and hiding in the laundry basket at every knock at the door. Something in his heart twisted. "Dragon eggs are nigh indestructible, not even time can ruin them. When I die the powers of the dragonlords will pass to our son, and when he dies to his, and so on the way it always has. One day one of our descendants will find a way into the great tomb, but now is not the time."

Hunith's shoulder's lost some of their tension, and he approached her, resting his palms on her shoulders. "Dragons are in my past now, my wife and son are my present. The dragon egg will wait for eternity if it has to, but you won't. Perhaps someday our son will make the journey, but not yet. Right now, _my_ sacred duty to my kin is to the two living members, not the dead or unhatched."

Hunith pulled away, and he sensed that he was forgiven for his rudeness to her guest even if her anger hadn't entirely abated. She murmured something about going to check on Merlin, and walked out the door. Balinor stood alone in the middle of the room, his hand slowly drifting to the moleskin pouch around his neck, lifting it out from beneath his shirt and turning it over in both hands. Absently, he undid the button for the first time since he rescued it from the neck of the Charmicael elder after Uther's bloodbath, sliding the heavy metal spiral into his hands.

He ran a finger along it, thinking of the runes carved in that he couldn't see in the dim lighting, as he felt the piece of the Triskelion. He thought over his words to Hunith, thought of the dead face of the clansman he'd taken this metal spiral from, along with so many other faces that inevitably were beginning to blur due to the passage of years.

Would they approve of his actions? Lying was not something their kin were familiar with. It didn't come naturally to dragons, and their lords seemed to have picked up that trait somewhere along the line, although as humans untruths were not as alien a concept to them. Still, the human clans would only lie when the need was dire.

Yet was it not? Whether or not Hunith trusted Borden, there was something not quite right about him. He would be a fool to take him at his honeyed words. He was not lying in what he said to Hunith; the time was not right, and the egg was in no hurry to hatch. This was an era of risks, and he'd just taken one by throwing all his hopes for the return of the dragons into the future, where nothing was guaranteed.

The door creaked open behind him, and Hunith walked in with Merlin trailing behind her, looking at something to the left. Balinor deposited the part of the Triskelion back into its pouch before she glanced up from where she'd been staring at the ground. She managed a smile, weak but there and real, and he smiled back.

He'd made the right choice; whether it turned out for good or ill later on, he would not regret it.

"What are you looking at?" He called softly to Merlin, who's head swiveled between his father and mother. A look of relief passed his features, and Balinor felt guilt stab at his heart as it occurred to him that Merlin had probably been worried about the unprecedented tension between his parents. He was a very perceptive child.

Merlin glanced back outside one more time, then shook his head. His eyes brightened and he skipped into the room with a wide grin, pulling at his mother's sleeve and beginning to chatter away to her in his not yet fully developed speech.

Balinor cleared up the breakfast dishes while Merlin played Opposites with Hunith, his wife and son coming to join him in the chore. Both parents, however, missed the way Merlin slipped away, pulling up his stool to open the left shutters. At the flood of light they glanced up, and called him. His eyes were on an indistinct shadow darting behind a nearby house, and he looked away when it passed from view, answering his parents' call.

From his hiding place behind the corner of the house left of theirs, Julius Borden cautiously watched the little boy scramble down from the window. He waited a moment, but when the parents' faces did not appear he let out a breath, and slowly edged away.

Once he was on the main road he walked like a man who knew what his purpose was, a brisk assurance in his steps which never faltered in where they should next land. He took to forks in the road without a moment's thought, his route already planned in his head.

The sun was high in the sky, past noon, when at last he came to a border town on the other side of the Forest of Ascetir, on Camelot's side of the border. He walked into a rough looking tavern without glancing at the sign, and took the empty stool nearest the barman.

The man looked him up and down with his one good eye, the other with an angry purple slash hidden behind a black eyepatch. "You didn't find whatever it was you were looking for then?"

"Oh, I did," Borden said, a curled shape in a pouch visible through the crack between the shutters playing obsessively through his mind, "There's just been a slight hiccup in getting it away from its guardian."

"Its dead guardian?" The bartender said sardonically, raising his eyebrows over his good eye and missing one.

"Evidently not as dead as I'd been informed," Borden drawled with slight frustration. "Still, my plans are not gone too remiss." Drawing a brown pouch from his pocket, he put it on the counter with a loud _clink_ that drew the bartender's good eye. "I'm afraid Uther won't be happy to see my face. How’d you fancy a trip to the palace? I hear the king pays well for news of sorcerers."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I firmly believe Merlin is a genius. We've seen him read difficult texts in archaic languages, study magic with a book as his only teacher, learn medicine purely through observation, show detective-worthy deductive skills, and still convince everyone he's an incompetent moron. He could totally do any of these not-quite-toddler-level things as a toddler.


	9. 0x09 - The Choices We All Make

After several years of audiences with no more weight behind their grievances than annual floods or bandits, Gaius felt he should have known the fragile peace was too good to be true. The Purge had merely been moved to the slow burner after the Isle of the Blessed was overthrown and all practitioners of the Old Religion died, fled, or – in the extremely exceptional cases like Gaius and the late Lady Vivienne – swore an oath to renounce all such practices. But there was no definitive end, and there never would be because the king had declared war on nature itself.

Most of the time the madness lurked hidden away, but one winter day it was brought to the forefront of all the minds of those gathering in the court audience chamber to hear the one-eyed witness.

Uther motioned the shady looking man with the eye patch to be taken to away for his reward, and then ordered Sir Cleges to have his men ready to depart to the outlying village of Ealdor within the hour. With that, the court was adjourned and the room was emptied of all except Gaius and the king.

Gaius was reminded of another time this had happened, and of the courageous nobleman who challenged the king's decision. He was not here now; the last the court had seen of him had been at his wife's funeral, almost four years before. Remembering the deep black smudges under her lifeless eyes and the drawn face of an insomniac finding no rest even in death, Gaius could not blame Gorlois for avoiding the city where she had breathed her last.

These days, the only man who rode between Tintagel and Camelot was a messenger, sent to collect draughts for the young Lady Morgana, who was beginning to suffer nightmares eerily similar to the ones that hastened her mother's tragic death.

Gaius thought of Gorlois and Vivienne, of their courage in the face of great adversity, and then of Hunith and Balinor and theirs.

He took a step towards the king's throne, knowing he was on thin ice but praying the fates would grant him some courage of his own.

"Sire," Gaius began, gathering his thoughts, "Forgive me, but this man has no proof behind his claims. The dragonlord is already dead; his head lies buried outside these walls. Why are you willing to risk war now, at such a critical time in your peace talks with Cenred, when there is so little reason to think the man you're hunting for lives at all?"

"Gaius," Uther sighed like he had had a long day and wasn't in the mood to argue his decision, "All leads to sorcerers must be properly investigated. Whether this is some imposter or lookalike, I must send men to confirm or else I risk far more than war. And -" he said as though he knew what Gaius' next argument was "- even if you were right and the dragon was the source of this sorcerer's power, if it's true he was able to fake his death then he is not as helpless as you made him out to be. There's no denying that if the man lives he's found a way to still practice magic."

"But surely sire," Gaius entreated, remembering what had changed Uther's mind four years ago, "If war was too great a price the last time this man was reported to be within Cenred's borders…"

Uther held up his hand, cutting Gaius off. "The last time, we had little information to work with; it would have taken search parties weeks of scouring the countryside to locate him. This time, the witness has given us a name and directions to the man's very house. My men can slip over the border and back in a matter of days, perhaps even hours. With luck, Cenred will be none the wiser any knight of Camelot stepped foot within his lands in the first place."

"But the border patrols, sire, will see evidence of the crossing."

"We'll deny any knowledge of it," Uther insisted stubbornly. "The tracks of a company of horsemen are not enough allegation of trespassing for Cenred to declare war over."

"What if," Gaius tried again, "your knights and Cenred's patrols should happen across one another?"

"No wars are won without taking risks," Rather pointedly, Uther cut off Gaius' next protests with, "You're dismissed, physician."

Gaius bowed and walked out the great stone room, making his way to the lower levels of the citadel with his mind turning over things he could do. The problem was, these turned out to be few.

Even if he could find a trustworthy messenger to deliver a warning, it would reach Balinor too late. Likewise, an old man like himself was not up to racing a company of elite fighters over lands he barely knew anymore on the old horse he'd bought years ago to lug supplies. Gorlois - the one man Gaius knew the whereabouts of who might be sympathetic to the plight of an innocent family threatened by the laws against magic - was leagues away in Tintagel, where no messenger would reach him in time for him to provide any useful aid.

Gaius' attempts to convince Uther had failed, and a mere physician could not override the king's orders. Briefly, Gaius considered declaring a quarantine of the city, but he abandoned the idea as folly. At the moment there wasn't so much as a couple of families with the sweating sickness, he wouldn't be able to maintain the fictitious plague for long and he had no way of explaining why a group of knights couldn't depart but a messenger could. Even if he could smooth away those wrinkles, with Uther's irrationality in regards to magic there was every chance he'd ignore his physician's advice and send out the knights anyways, plague or no.

An hour later he watched the horse riders in shining armour receded into the distance, away from Gaius and Camelot. Whatever way of stopping or delaying them he might have been able to devise given more time to think was useless now. With the knights gone, Gaius was helpless.

Perhaps it would not end in tragedy, Gaius tried to think optimistically. Balinor had evaded Uther twice; perhaps fortune would smile on him one more time.

He stood by the ramparts, watching the empty sweep of green land away from the city for a long while though, unable to convince the foreboding in his heart.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

A child's short, skinny finger pointed upwards an indeterminable white puff of cloud against an ocean of light blue, "That one lookth like a cow."

Merlin had to walk fast to keep up with his father's longer steps, talking excitedly the whole way. Though it was nearing harvest time, Balinor was not working in the fields. The two of them were heading into the forest for a game of hide-and-seek.

It had all started the day before when Hunith came down with a fever and headache. After coming home to his wife cradling her head in her arms leaning against the table with supper only half cooked, Balinor promised her he'd stay home and take care of her the next day. However, it quickly became apparent that what Hunith needed was not chores done or cooling cloths on her forehead, but a bit of peace and quiet – a rare commodity with a chatty four-year-old constantly underfoot. So Balinor and Merlin were going to go play in the woods, while Hunith a slept away her summer flu.

It had been weeks since Merlin's birthday party and – though Balinor had been keeping a watchful eye open in case of Borden's return – all seemed well. The only difference was Merlin's newfound friendship with the boy Will, and their many happy hours running around their houses and exasperating their mothers.

The first time of waiting for him to come back, whittling without any idea of what he was making, had been nearly unbearable. Hunith too had seemed distracted at the various tasks she was occupying herself with, and when the door opened both of them had silently risen as one, like the accused who just heard their sentence. When Herleva smiled as she dropped Merlin off and said how well-behaved he'd been, it felt like a dam of ice had melted all at once.

After Hunith and Balinor had finally asked too many questions about his day, exasperating even such a talkative easygoing child as Merlin, he'd thrown his hands up in the air like he was making a grand pronouncement and declared,

"I'm not a baby!"

Now, beside him Merlin chattered on about the various things he and young Will had done the day before, and what their plans were for the next day. It was still strange to think of Merlin leaving the house without him or Hunith to keep an eye on him, but every day that passed only proved it more: Merlin was no longer a baby, nor even truly a toddler. He was just a little boy, but little boys could at least be trusted to understand the concept of secrets, even if they weren't as careful with them as their anxious parents may like.

Merlin was tugging on his arm, trying to get his attention so Balinor could see the wide hand gestures he was accentuating his story with, when Balinor suddenly threw an arm out in front of him and hushed him. Merlin looked rather put out by this, but mercifully fell silent. They stood still for a moment in the quiet while Balinor confirmed with a sinking heart what had stopped him in the first place: the sound of many hooves approaching.

Balinor quickly drew Merlin off the dirt path, hiding them both in nearby lush bushes. Aside from a whispered question over whether they had started playing already, Merlin made no protest. Balinor was unable to answer verbally with the thundering hooves drawing nearer and nearer, so he settled for a curt nod of the head, and drew Merlin closer to him.

It was not, as he feared, brigands or Cenred's men come to terrorize the people into paying taxes. For through the gaps between the branches, he could see red and silver riding past, heading the way he and Merlin had just come from, towards the village. As always, when something came to shatter Balinor's world it came with no warning just when he thought that the fates had finally decided to leave him be in peace.

_Hunith_ , he thought sickeningly, her waxy fevered face hovering in his mind. Was she asleep already? She was in no state to handle Uther's dogs.

Perhaps they had not come for him?

Why else would they be here, proudly bearing their blood-coloured uniforms in hostile territory? He did not want to know what ran through that double-crossing honourless snake Uther's mind, but even he in all his arrogance could surely see the folly of sending a party of men across a border boldly wearing his colours. It was like asking for a war.

But as far as Uther was concerned, he was already at war: with magic, and all those who possessed it, down to the least child. And in times of war, it was only _honourable_ to give your enemies the courtesy of knowing who their killers were.

After the horsemen passed by, he picked Merlin up and glanced around wildly, eyes settling on a hollow tree that Merlin had hidden in the last time they'd played before planting season. Glancing down at where Uther's men had vanished, he crossed over to the tree in a few long strides.

"Father?" Merlin said, muffled from where Balinor had pressed him against his chest. "What'th going on?"

"A new game," Balinor said, not wanting to cause the four-year-old to panic. He needed to get to Hunith, but he couldn't risk taking Merlin with him in case he failed and was caught. He wouldn't let them catch his son. "You're going to be hiding from those men who just went by."

"But I went out with you!" Merlin protested, beginning childish hysterics in spite of Balinor's efforts. "The bad men in wed can only get me if I go out alone!"

Casting about desperately for the explanation that would calm Merlin down the quickest, Balinor settled on, "And they won't get you, as long as you stay hidden."

He tried to lower Merlin through the hole in the tree trunk, but Merlin kicked out violently, wriggling with all his might as he screamed. "No! No! I don't wanna hide! They'll find me, they'll find me! They'll find me and give me to the flameth!"

Balinor looked anxiously down the path. There wasn't any sound of Uther's men turning around as far as he could determine, but Merlin's panicking cries were hard to hear over. "They'll definitely find you if you're this loud!" Balinor hissed, shaking the child in frustration.

Merlin immediately stopped yelling, though his loud sniffles weren't much quieter. Balinor thought quickly, and then yanked the pouch hidden under his tunic out. Holding it up to Merlin's face, he asked quickly, "Do you see this Merlin? Do you know what it is?"

Merlin sniffed loudly, shaking his head. "It's a protection charm," Balinor made up, not sure what to think of how easily the lie came to him. "Father has to go find Mother, but as long as you hold this and stay hidden, the bad men in red won't find you. And if they don't find you, neither will the flames."

Merlin took the pouch with shaky fingers, looking brokenheartedly with his teary eyes into Balinor's, imploring him. "I don't want you to go."

But he didn't resist when Balinor lowered him into the tree trunk, still looking up through the hole only a child could fit through, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the dark of the hollowed wood. "I have to go get Mother," Balinor insisted, praying Merlin would obey. _Hunith_ , his heart churned, as though calling her name with each beat. _Hunith, Hunith, Hunith._ "Then I'll be back, with Mother. I'll bring Mother here, and we'll all go together. Just stay here, and stay hidden. I'll be right back."

Merlin nodded, not saying another word as the lessons his games of hiding taught him took effect. Balinor turned away, but he could feel the two gleaming light-coloured eyes following him even after he was sure Merlin could no longer see him from where he was crouched in the tree. The gaze burned against the back of his neck, and he tried not to think about how terrified Merlin must be now that all his parents' warnings were coming true.

He had to focus on getting to Hunith. Merlin was fine, for now. It was Hunith who was in danger.

Uther's men's trail was easy to follow, the only horse prints for miles. How on earth did Uther expect this to go unnoticed? What ever happened to employing bounty hunters to do his work for him? Was he really going to start a war over Balinor?

He truly was insane. The mad tyrant, what a fitting moniker.

The horses could not go very fast on the untended path. After sprinting for perhaps ten minutes, Balinor caught sight of them, and quickly took cover behind thick foliage. The head of the company pulled to a stop, throwing up a hand to signal the other men. He dismounted, leveling his sword at what to Balinor looked like a plain giant oak. "Show yourselves!"

Two boys of about ten and seven tumbled from behind the tree, their glowing red hair a stark contrast against the green forest floor. Catrin's children, he realized with a foreboding feeling. He never had seen Catrin again, and even though Balinor was hardly the most social man in the village there was no way that could happen unless she went out of her way to avoid him. He looked at the two little boys and wondered what their mother had told them about the family with the child whose eyes she had once seen glow.

The boys' eyes were wide, but Balinor was too far away to tell if it was with awe or fear. "You're knights!" the elder boy exclaimed, rather evidently given their gleaming silver armour and warhorses.

"We're knights of Camelot, looking for a man calling himself Keith," the dismounted knight announced, not lowering his sword but making no move to further threaten the boys. He seemed entirely unphased that he was demanding information out of two children who were not even subjects of his land, but Balinor spared scarcely more than a passing thought on the unbelievable arrogance of Uther's dogs. "Where is he?"

The elder boy pointed down the path they'd just come down. "He went that way."

The knight glanced over his shoulder at the forest behind them. His face was only visible to Balinor for a moment, but he thought the man looked puzzled. "Why?"

"Because he's weird," the younger boy said confidently, as though it was a forgone conclusion. Balinor felt cold and the memory Catrin backing away from a newborn in terror replayed across his eyes. Of all the children the knights could have chosen to waylay, it _would_ have to be Catrin's. "Mother says we're not allowed to go near that man or his changeling."

Balinor thought his heart might stop. _Changeling_. He tried to dislodge the word from where it was stuck between his ears, looping over and over inside his head, as if he stopped thinking it it could make the word be unsaid.

The elder boy indiscreetly kicked the younger in the leg, hissing loud enough for even Balinor to hear, " _Or_ talk about them _, you little sodden-skulled marl-head!"_

The younger gasped loudly, and the two looked moments away from degenerating into a childish exchange of various synonyms for 'stupid' until the knight interrupted their budding quarrel with an impatient, "Why not?"

The younger bounced on the balls of his feet, quailing only under the elder's stern gaze. Suddenly, a short leg shot out and tripped the taller boy, and the younger said rather self-importantly bouncing on his heels while his brother lay groaning on the ground, "Because they might curse us to death like Old Ann for saying mean things."

The older boy hefted himself up and slugged the younger across the back of the head. "So stopping talking already!"

The younger threw himself to the ground on top of the older, and the boys broke out into a fight as if there was not still a company of knights halted in right in front of them.

The leader of the company looked away from the brawling boys, perhaps thinking he'd gotten all answers that could be gotten out of them. He made a sweeping motion with his hands towards his men, who checked their horses and disappeared into the trees in the direction the older boy had pointed. The leader remounted, and nudged his horse into a run after them.

Balinor crept low to the ground. They weren't going into the village, where Hunith was. That was good. If he could draw them away, they need never know of Hunith or Merlin. He'd make up something to tell them about his "changeling". If only he could think of what to say.

Blood pounded through his body at a dizzying pace, making it difficult to breath, let alone think.

A dirty blond knight was nearest to him, glancing above where Balinor lay crouched. Within minutes he would draw up alongside him, and the foliage would not hide Balinor's exposed back. Forced into making a decision with too little time to think, with a whispered spell a snake spooked that knight's horse, sending him flying off his mount.

Balinor broke cover and ran. He could hear shouting behind him through the pounding pulse in his ears, and looking over his shoulders he could see the horsemen converge into a line coming after him. With a flash of his eyes, a tree branch fell to block their path, making them check their mounts to avoid being crushed.

He'd head for the River of Essetir, he thought quickly as he ran, needing to give himself a destination. He'd jump in the water, and their chainmail would weigh them down if they tried to follow him. The current would carry him to Camelot, but he'd escaped once from there, he could do it again. He had to.

And if they followed him back to Camelot, then they wouldn't find Merlin or Hunith.

Should he come back for them? He wanted to, he needed them like he needed air to live… but this was all because of him. Wouldn't he just be putting them back in danger? What if Uther posted men to watch for his return?

He promised Merlin he'd be back, though. He'd told Hunith he would trust her when the bounty hunter almost drove them apart, and he had no intention of taking back those words.

But were promises truly more important than their safety?

A crossbow whizzing past his ear, narrowing missing his ducked head, made Balinor take his focus off what he _would_ do if he got away and on what he _needed_ to do _now_.

On horseback the knights would have overtaken him had the terrain been less advantageous. However, the dense wood was easier to navigate for Balinor who did not have to be constantly tugging on reins to swerve around trees. That the forest came alive with Balinor's panted utterances and became hell-bent on denying his pursuers passage was another point in his favour. Arrows whizzed in his after-shadow, missing only because he kept moving, and Balinor blessed Uther's code for training his men more on _honourable_ weapons like swords. He glanced back every few moments, trying to work out which one of them had the crossbow. If he could just get it away from him…

Pain, unexpectedly from the front, sent him reeling forwards to the ground. Disorientated, he could hear the sounds of yelling from in front of him, unable to make out what was happening. He had been so sure that Uther's men were behind him. Had there been another company lying in ambush?

The ring of metal upon metal sounded all around him, men yelling incoherently in a great circle from every direction. Pushing himself up to his knees, he snapped out the shaft of the arrow, leaving the head embedded in his side as a cork against the blood flow. Looking around in befuddlement, he saw a blur of colour: silver everywhere, clashing crimson and mauve; the garish red of Camelot against the better camouflaging darker colour of Cenred's men. A border patrol, Balinor thought foggily, lurching to his feet unsteadily.

A couple of men in red looked over furiously to where he was staggering, but couldn't get away from their purple clad opponents to stop him. Like a drunk, Balinor tried to evade over swung blows from both sides, reacting too slow each time to fully escape. Something thin and long bit into his leg, and he collapsed, aggravating the pain in his side.

Closing his eyes, he tried to think of spells of healing, but they fell away like water cupped in palms, seeping slowly away with no way of retaining them. _Magic requires focus,_ he recalled in his mother's voice, a lesson often given to him in days that were long past, _and the more powerful the spell, the more focus is required._

That was why self-healing was said to be the hardest branch of magic; even the greatest of sorcerers cannot heal if they cannot think. Healing magic was difficult and finicky at the best of times, trying to do it while injured yourself was nigh impossible.

The Old Tongue rolled out of his mouth regardless, using words that were not the correct words to say to do what he wanted them to, but he used them anyways because he had no others. The echoing of fighting echoed all around him, and he neither knew nor cared who was winning.

_Hunith_ , he thought.

She wasn't here. She was at home, sick. Resting. They didn't know about her. They hadn't gone to the village. She would be fine.

_Merlin_ , he thought, recalling two light eyes looking out from a dark hollow tree.

Hunith would go looking for him when he failed to come home. Merlin knew not to hide from his parents once the game was over. These men hadn't found him.

But the red-haired child had told them. _Changeling_ , he’d said.  _That man and his changeling_. _Them_. It wouldn't take much looking for Uther's men to work out who the other one of his _them_ was.

He couldn't let them.

He didn't know how to stop them.

But he couldn't let them.

He crumpled to the ground, unable to maintain the effort of kneeling when it was so hard just to think.

He needed a changeling, one that wasn't Merlin. Just for a moment was alright. Just as long as Uther's men could see something they could accredit as being the other part of his _them_ , capable of cursing an old woman to her death.

When he opened his eyes his vision swam in spots of black, and his tongue felt heavy as he brought down a great branch off a tree, falling with a loud _thud_ beside him. Men yelled as they were knocked out of the way, but he couldn't make out whether they wore red or purple. Colour was being washed from the world like dye draining away in a flood.

It took more effort than he thought to raise his hand over the log, and his tongue tripped over the spell he needed. He licked his lips and tried again, feeling that he was forgetting a large part of the incantation and jumbling what he could remember. That was okay. Unlike healing magic, precision wasn't necessary here. Even if the results were off, as long as it moved he didn't care.

The wood burned and twisted beneath his hand, turning into something that was not wood at all. It twisted and lunged, away from him. Lifting his head, he saw the log leap at a silver covered man, swinging its newfound limbs in reckless abandon. There was more shouting, just as indistinctive, and other men rushed forward to attack the strange misshapen thing he'd created.

Balinor's head fell back.

The men battled with his changeling.

All he could think was, _it worked, then_.

And then he closed his eyes, too exhausted for further thought.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

When Hunith woke, the first thing she noticed was that it was dark. The second was that she was alone.

She fumbled to light the candle, and looked all around her house in bewilderment. The lunch dishes were still on the table, and there was no sign of supper. Surely Balinor and Merlin should be back by now? They would have come home for supper at least.

Balinor should have woken her hours ago.

This wasn't right.

She didn't waste time finding a shawl, just opened her door and looked out at the starry sky. It felt like a clawed fist was clenching around her chest, refusing to let her lungs expand or heart beat in the rhythm they should. It was far too late for playing in the woods.

Without stopping and with only her candle as her guide, Hunith ghosted over the darkened street of Ealdor to the woods, where strange sounds echoed unseen in the still night air. She remembered coming to these woods before at dark, with Balinor on their second Samhain. She had been frightened then too, but he had given her a light and then she wasn't anymore.

Hunith thrust the candle out in front of her, the meager protection doing little to calm her, and stepped into the woods.

She couldn't say how long she wandered before she heard little whines different in pitch from the other noises of the night. But when she did, she knew them for what they were, and her feet were fleet as she wove around the dark outlines of trees towards the source of the noise. The sight of the great tree only threw her for a minute, an old memory of daylight fun had her remember what was special about this particular tree.

She shone the candle in the hole, and two tear-streaked cheeks shone back at her, "Mother!" Merlin sobbed, frantically throwing out his hands to be picked up.

She clutched him against her chest, rubbing soothing circles into his back as she tried not to panic. "What happened? Where's Father, Merlin?"

"I don't know," Merlin sobbed against her. "I'm hiding from the bad men in wed. Father'th coming back for me. He pwomithed."

_The bad men in red_.

"Oh God," Hunith breathed into Merlin's hair, clutching him closer to her. She looked around frantically, even though if Uther's knights were nearby they would have been drawn to the sound Merlin's crying as she had been.

Her feet were moving before she had any destination in mind, her wrist flicking back and forth to try and illuminate the woods with her meager candle. Merlin clung around her neck as she walked, still crying. Only the dark sounds of the night met them, and little branches and bushes were all her candlelight revealed.

What was she doing? It was madness to search the woods when it was this dark already; she'd never find anything. But it would be madness to go back home, to sit in the cottage with Merlin against her and wait for the door to fly open at any moment, when it could be Balinor or Uther's men on the other side.

She needed to know, and that was all she allowed herself to think as she stumbled about in the dark. She had no idea where she was anymore. The sky lightened to a navy blue with a purple glow on the horizon, and still she wandered. The woods still looked familiar even though she'd been walking for hours; she must have been wandering in circles all night. Walking and walking and going nowhere.

Her candle had long since burnt out, but the glow on the horizon illuminated more than the tiny flickering flame had anyways. The sun was peaking its golden-orange head over the horizon through the gaps in the trees when Hunith tripped.

She had just enough time to aim herself so that she hit the ground on the side where she didn't have a child clutched. Merlin flopped against her; he'd long since fallen prey to exhaustion, and it appeared not even the unavoidable jolt of their tumble was enough to rouse him now. Hunith carefully switched arms, as she had many times before during the night. At four, Merlin was no longer an unnoticeable weight to carry.

She rubbed her ankle, frowning at the log that had tripped her. It didn't look like an old branch fallen off a tree, more like someone had hewn off a great healthy limb and left it lying in the middle of the forest. Beside it, now that she was nearer the ground she could see, was the unmistakeable shape of a hoof print.

Cold and numb from her long trudging night, she fingered the physical proof of Merlin's words being more than childish terror for a moment before looking around for the trail.

She didn't have to follow it far before it brought her to a trampled section of the forest, where a few horses lay unmoving on their sides and men in both purple and red were fallen all around. The scene was completely senseless; bodies and weapons fallen indiscriminately, so she couldn't tell which weapons came from which felled men. She was glad Merlin was asleep. She didn't want him to see this.

In the centre of the chaos, a colour caught her eye that was neither red nor purple nor silver, but a home-dyed plain brown that she would recognize anywhere. It was as motionless as the rest of the bodies. She approached tentatively, praying she was wrong. But when she drew back the familiar shoulders to see the familiar face of her husband, she couldn't deny it to herself.

"Balinor?"

Her eyes were blurring from lack of sleep and the remnants of her fever, so it took her a minute to determine why he was so still. A single shaft of wood protruded from his chest, the feathering of the arrow snapped off but the head remaining. She tried not to think about what it had punctured in such a vital area, instead placing her hands on Balinor's chest desperately. It was still.

She sank to her knees, unable to stand any longer.

It couldn't be still.

He had just taken Merlin out to play, as a favour for her. They'd been together for five years now, and Uther had been a threat looming in the distance the whole time. He couldn't take Balinor away from her now, he just couldn't.

The stillness of Balinor's chest disagreed with her.

She must have done something, moved in some way, because Merlin stirred against her sleepily. Immediately she stilled, breathing only shallowly until he settled again. She couldn't let him see this. This could not be the last he ever saw of his father.

How was she going to tell him?

Slowly, desperately, she placed her shaking fingers over Balinor's jugular vein, praying for a miracle. Her prayers went unanswered; there was no pulse. Her hand slipped away, the straining muscles in her torso held back from coming undone only by the knowledge that if she broke down then she'd wake up her son, and that he could not be allowed to see this.

_What am I going to do?_ she asked Balinor's still form. She waited, but there was no answer. No miraculous last words saved on a dying breath just for her. She had found him far too late to hope even for that.

She repeated the words aloud, and there was still nothing but the sound of her own voice, alone. She hadn't been alone in years, not since Balinor had first unexpectedly come into her life. How had she ever lived without him? She could not now remember her life from those days clearly.

Instead she saw herself and Balinor, constantly supporting one another as they thought late into the night, tossing around ideas for how they could make safeguarding Merlin seem to him a fun game. Even though the threat of the Purge had been there all along, she hadn't truly felt it because she wasn't facing it alone. Beside her every step of the way was her truest friend and love, just as committed to protecting their family as she. When there was a knock at the door she could count on him to grab the baby and whatever was floating at the time, and when her friends traded rumours behind her back she could count on him to hear and not just tell her, but act alongside her as they played the charade of a normal family to dispel the harmful whisperings.

He was her one ally in the fight for their happiness, the one person she knew who would shoulder the burdens and share the joys with her.

Her throat felt as if she had swallowed a ball of lead; she couldn't breathe.

She couldn't do this alone.

Merlin's arm tightened against her, a frown marring his sleeping face, and she knew she'd have to.

She stood slowly, trying to gather her thoughts. She had to bury Balinor, but she couldn't without waking Merlin. She had to put him down but to do so would leave him vulnerable; there could be more knights wandering the woods even as the thought occurred to her. She looked around her, but the empty forest that greeted her was not reassuring. The forest had surely looked just as empty and harmless yesterday, when she lay sleeping unaware at home.

She unwound her headscarf, tearing the fabric into little ribbons. She tied them onto tree branches as she walked back in the direction the rising sun told her Ealdor, so that a path of faded grey cloth was there to guide her back to the site of her worst nightmares. She thought as she walked back to the village, trying to imagine who she could leave Merlin with, for she dared not leave him at home alone.

Mercifully, Herleva was already dressed when she knocked on her door. She could see William the elder sitting at the breakfast table, listening to little Will talk in the background. Hunith could see words dying on Herleva's lips and knew that she must look as she felt.

She held Merlin out, and wordlessly Herleva took him, unasked questions clambering across her face. Hunith couldn't bring herself to answer properly, even though she knew that this must seem strange. She had no idea what she was going to tell the village.

For now, she just said, "I need you to watch him."

Once Herleva nodded her agreement in confused concern, Hunith turned and left. William and Herleva were level-headed, sensible people and they were fond of Merlin. If there was anyone left in Ealdor who could be trusted to watch him for the short period she couldn't, it was them. William was a big, strong man, more than a match for any knight foolish enough to think a man who wielded a plough didn't know how to defend himself. If there were still knights lurking, he would be of more use in defending Merlin than she.

Although she told herself this, Hunith followed the trail of cloth back as quickly as she could, stopping only on the way to grab a shovel. She didn't allow herself to think as she dug, beside the river rather than where Balinor had been killed. He'd once told her of a Lake of eternal beauty and magic, and how the river carried the candles he lit on Samhain as tokens to be seen by those on the other side of its watery veil. They'd sat on the shore together, finding peace in each other's company despite the pain of his past, believing they had all the time in the world to spend together.

Her hands shook on the handle of the shovel as she dug into the blurred ground she could hardly see through the moisture in her eyes. No sound escaped from her choked throat. The flowing of the river was just as noisy as it had been on that night, but this time the thudding her of shovel into the dirt punctuated the calm, defiling something that once she had found peaceful.

Once the hole was deep enough, she climbed out and returned to the aftermath of the battle between Cenred's and Uther's men, not even looking upon their bodies. Balinor was heavy, by the time she had dragged him to the river she was slick with sweat and panting. She lowered him into the grave as gently as she could.

Then it was just her, kneeling by a hole beside a river, looking down at the closed face of her husband.

There should be words that she should say, she thought, but she couldn't get them past her throat. How can you say a lifetime of words in one moment, just before you cover the unresponsive face of the one you wanted to say them to in dirt?

Finally, she said simply the only thing that there was to say, words she had told him over and over and thought she would be able to say to him again and again in the future. "I love you."

And then she collapsed, and when sobs tore helplessly through her the empty forest alone bore witness to her grief.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Cenred held out the glossy pieces of parchment, the ink shining with colourful seals and words of peace, examining them as though they were a strange curiosity. An amused smile flittered across his face as he ripped them into shreds, and then shuffled them into a stack. He held out the stack to the travel-stained knight kneeling before him in his report.

"Pin them to the bodies," he said once the knight took them, "then cart the bodies to the other side of the Forest of Ascetir so Uther has no excuse for further trespassing. Let's see what he does when he discovers what's become of his _generous_ offerings of a peace accord."

The man bowed and left, and Cenred stood from his throne, idly pacing while he thought. The survivors of the border patrol reported Uther's knights had been chasing a sorcerer. That was of no concern to him; they had trespassed and therefore they would be punished accordingly. What Uther chose to do in his own kingdom was his business, but Cenred would not let him destroy perfectly good resources within his borders. He had made his position on the useful asset that was magic clear to Uther long before, but it would appear that another reminder was due.

It was too bad the sorcerer was dead now. Cenred had reaped some great profits from the foes Uther so carelessly made for himself.

Except Uther wasn't normally so careless as to endanger his own proposed treaty by violating the border, nor did he normally need reminders of Cenred's unchanging stance.

His spies in Camelot would know the reason behind this particular arrogance on Uther's part, and what made this sorcerer different from all the others who'd fled his way in recent years. Cenred was not a fool; he knew the pockets of bounty hunters dragging away his taxpayers were mostly lined with gold from Camelot, but that was the usual extent of Uther's domineering over the border. To send out knights into his land was akin to a declaration of full-out war. If Cenred chose to declare such, Uther would have no moral superiority to garner allies with.

Unfortunately the timing wasn't ideal. Cenred didn't have the military strength to prevail against Camelot at the moment. Still, he couldn't allow himself to be seen as weak by accepting a truce with a man who had no respect for a little something called a border.

"Ingild," he called, spinning on his feet to face a fat balding man standing to the side. The man startled at the sudden attention of his king.

He stepped forward, the chains binding a young malnourished girl to his side rattling as they forced her forward with him. Cenred didn't note much about her beyond that she was new, which wasn't uncommon. Ingild had never once had an "apprentice" who lasted until the end of the contract. Some unhappy fate always befell the youths before they were in a position to potentially replace him.

When Ingild knelt it forced the girl to the floor, and she threw out a manacled hand to steady herself, exposing a druid symbol tattooed across the back. "My lord," Ingild simpered, "How may I be of service to you?"

"Once my ears within Camelot have told me who it is that Uther wanted so desperately, you will investigate the matter yourself to see if there are any benefits left to be reaped."

"Of course, your majesty," Ingild bowed, causing the chained girl to bob down as well. "After all, who better to investigate a matter of magic than your Court Sorcerer?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I. feel. terrible. Does it make it better or worse that I planned out Balinor's death from the earliest outline?
> 
> It was only in the initial brainstorming process that I even toyed with the idea of keeping Balinor around and having him teach Merlin magic. Then I ran into the "why would Merlin go to Camelot if he didn't need Gaius to teach him?" and the "would Merlin really be the same person if he had his father around his whole life?" and the "why would Balinor ever agree to his son going to live under the nose of the man who slaughtered his entire family?" problems, to name a few. Every time I tried to write around them, it just didn't feel right.
> 
> Finally, I came to the conclusion that the real reason it didn't feel right was because I'd killed the scriptwriter's plot-device of magical knowledge (Kilgharrah) and then added my own (Balinor), and the plot was going outrageously off course like a rollercoaster that broke through the railings and was about to come smashing down in a huge wreck. How can I claim that the dragon wasn't that necessary then give Merlin all kinds of magical knowledge he didn't have in Season 1?! I'm not against other fics where Merlin is trained in magic from childhood but I don't think this can be one of them, because that would be really hypocritical of me. The entire basis of this fic is that the dragon's dead and Merlin needs to figure stuff out on his own, I can't just hand him years' worth of knowledge gift-wrapped on a silver platter before Season 1 even starts.
> 
> But what cinched Balinor's death as opposed to exile or imprisonment or amnesia (several tentative solutions I came up with) is that for Merlin to inherit dragonlord powers, his father needed to be dead. So if you really want to blame anyone, blame whichever BBC writer thought that up. What kind of condition is it that?! Also, for those of you that know the legends, there's a certain childhood story I'm planning on including that will only work if Merlin can be described as "fatherless."


	10. 0x10 - The Triskelion

The man who introduced himself as Ingild's voice was oily when he asked her, "Are you aware that under the law sorcerers are deemed weapons and that it is a crime to conceal any form of weapon from your king?"

Hunith was seated straight backed in her chair at the kitchen table, wearing her best non-expression on her face. The fat balding man sitting across from her wore a courtier's smile that was not comforting in the least. Merlin squirmed in her lap, and she tightened her arms wrapped around him warningly.

Woodenly, she repeated, "I've hidden nothing. All I know about the man who died is that he was my husband, nothing more."

The denial tasted bitter on her tongue, but the weight of Merlin on her lap was more than enough incentive to declare herself ignorant. She had to protect what was left of her family. She did not know Cenred's policy towards those who knowingly harboured sorcerers, and she cursed herself now for this lack of knowledge. It would be easier if she knew what she was trying to avoid; whether it was a mere fine or the gallows for her and her son.

The man had arrived on her doorstep an hour ago, showing an official seal and telling her she was wanted for questioning. He invaded her home and grilled her on everything she knew about Balinor - was she aware he was a sorcerer, when did he arrive, how did they meet, and so forth.

Being forced to describe all she knew of the day of his death was the hardest. Weeks had passed since that awful day she woke up alone, and it still felt as though her house was too dark and too empty. She'd look over her shoulder and realize she was addressing empty air. The villagers coming by to offer help was both blessing and curse, for having others do what were Balinor's chores stung with the sheer wrongness of it all. If it hadn't been for Merlin, she didn't know what she would have done. She needed to be strong for her son when she had to repeatedly force herself to answer the forlorn words, 'When ith Father coming home?'

Now, nearly a month since she had choked the first time she had had to say _never_ and try to convince her son of a wonderful place called Heaven, Merlin had stopped asking. She'd thought it would be a relief, but it wasn't. She felt like Balinor was slowly beginning to fade, until he would become nothing but a distant memory in the same way as Antonius and Julia, and her parents before them. She hardly remembered her parents, and she had been twice Merlin's age when they had passed on. It seemed cruel beyond words that Merlin would have no clear memories of his father's little acts of kindness, and would only ever know him in the simple way a child knew his parents.

She feared losing Balinor in the passage of time as their lives went on and his didn't. But now, he had returned to haunt them in the worst way; a man sent by a king to investigate his death.

"Come now," the court man's attempt at comforting her only succeeded in putting her more on edge. "Whether or not you were aware of who your husband was, you were still hiding a user of powerful magic from your king. I understand, of course, but others... well, they might ask questions."

Hunith didn't say anything, too afraid of accidentally incriminating herself in some way. The man was eying Merlin with more intensity than she liked when he said, "Though no harm has been done and the man in question is no longer under your roof, so I suppose we can call it all water under the bridge if you just allow me to do one last little thing..."

The raggedy girl in an awkward stage between childhood and adulthood stepped forward as though signaled, her tattooed hands gripping a large wooden box in front of her like a shield. Hunith did not miss the girl's flinch when the man's hands drew close to lift the lid. Like an angry red bracelet, chafed skin encircled the girl's bare wrists. Hunith was too afraid of jeopardizing the safety of the child in her arms to ask about it.

Ingild lifted out several long clear crystals strung together in a band. He held them in front of him and started to chant, the words of the Old Tongue falling from his lips much more harshly than she had ever heard them fall from Balinor's. Hunith shivered at the sinister sounds, and for the first time knew why others feared magic as evil. The man's eyes locked on Merlin were magnified by the crystals he was looking through so that they were unnaturally large as they stared unblinkingly forwards. Hunith watched him back, frozen, heart racing as she tried to imagine what he was doing. A flash of gold flared behind him, in the eyes of the pitiful girl, distracting her momentarily just before gold flared in the eyes of the fat man.

With a disappointed sigh, he gave the crystals back to the girl, who fumbled them so badly she almost dropped them. "Nothing."

"What was that?" Hunith finally dared to ask, now that the moment had passed and the man seemed no longer interested in the child clutched against her.

"Just a little test," the man replied. "To see if your boy has any traces of magic in him."

"There's none?" Hunith tried to keep the surprise from her voice. How could that be possible?

"Not yet, at any rate. I don't know what I was expecting; it's incredibly rare for it manifest until children reach about Oilell's -" he gestured to the girl without looking at her "- age."

Hunith nodded, her mind in turmoil. She wasn't sure what to think. She knew Merlin had magic; it had been obvious within minutes of his birth. How could the Court Sorcerer himself not see any signs when he looked?

Behind the man, the girl put the crystals back in their box with shaking tattooed hands, clutching it to her chest. Hunith had seen cornered rabbits less skittish. Terrified eyes darted from the sorcerer to the mother and child opposite him, looking as though she expected punishment to rain down upon her any moment.

The man stood from his chair, and the girl backed up a few steps away from him. "That's all for today, thank you for your time. You've been most helpful. I'll be back to see how your son is growing. Remember," his gaze darted briefly to Merlin's, "all sorcerers must announce themselves to the king. To not do so is treason."

With those uncomforting parting words, the man at last made for her door. The girl scurried to follow him, but just before stepping outside she turned and did something that if Hunith had not seen it herself, she never would have believed.

She bowed.

Then she was gone.

Hunith and Merlin stayed seated for several minutes afterwards, but when no one came back they rose.

"I don't like him," Merlin whispered to her. "Why did he ask all thothe questionth? Why did he look at me like that?"

"Why don't you go play with Will?" Hunith evaded, not sure how to answer. Merlin looked like he knew what she was doing, but obediently slipped out the door and down the street anyways.

Hunith cleared up the lunch dishes - a task she had been midway through when Ingild knocked on her door - with her hands shaking as she thought.

Though the village appeared to accept her story of how Balinor had been killed in the crossfire of a border skirmish, she lived in fear of such a knock. She hadn't expected the man knocking to hold out Cenred's insignia, though.

Her wash cloth scrubbed with unneeded force, and she wondered why she had assumed threats only ever came from over the border. Cenred was not Uther, but the thought of people who could assassinate him without lifting a finger roaming unchecked in his lands would appeal to no king. She thought of the girl Oilell, bile clawing at her throat, and wondered if she had sat like Merlin in her mother's lap while enlarged eyes peered intently at her through a band of crystals.

Her hands stilled as she remembered the flash of gold in the girl's eyes, immediately before the spell's completion, and saw Ingild lowering the crystals in disappointment again as though it was happening right in front of her.

Had the girl been the reason Ingild hasn't sensed the magic in Merlin?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock, and the cold terror she held during Ingild's visit returned. Without stopping to dry her hands, she made her way to the door, opening it in trepidation.

Yet it was not Ingild or Oilell standing there, nor one of her neighbours come to question her about her strange guests. Hunith exclaimed warmly, relieved at the unexpected yet familiar face.

"Julius!"

Julius Borden smiled.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

It became apparent to him soon enough that Hunith had no idea where the piece of the Triskelion was, or even that it had ever been within her walls at all. He looked around her house discreetly while she occupied herself with chores, trying not to feel guilty when he noticed telltale little changes like a chair missing at the table.

How was he supposed to know that the dragonlord would have the bad luck to run into a border patrol while escaping Uther's men?

It wasn't his fault. It was the dragonlord's fault, for refusing to help and driving him to desperate measure. He only meant to separate the man from his attachments and rekindle his grudge against Uther, making him more susceptible to the temptation the tomb offered. His death hadn't been planned, it was a freak accident.

That's what Julius Borden told himself, anyways.

He'd gotten good at telling himself things to silence that little whispery voice in the back of his mind that sounded irritatingly like Gaius. That voice had been growing dimmer and dimmer during his months on the run, when he told himself more things over and over. It hardly bothered him now, as if it had grown tired by its fruitless efforts to change his mind.

Seeing Hunith, so guilelessly happy to see him without knowing what he had caused, had awoken the voice from its deep slumber.

He watched Hunith and her son - what was his name again, surely he had been told? - interacting innocently, the boy just as shy as the last time he'd visited. And he assured himself in a constant litany that it wasn't his fault, until he glimpsed something that captured his attention and drove the whispering voice from his mind entirely.

A pouch hung around the boy's neck, and - though he hadn't gotten a good look from the crack between the shutters - he thought it was the same size as the one the dragonlord had worn. He went through the snatches of hushed conversation he'd heard through the shutters, picked apart words he'd committed to memory. _When I die the power of the dragonlords will pass to our son._

He waited until mother and son had gone to sleep, before stealing over to the smaller of the bedrolls. Gingerly, he lifted the pouch from the boy's neck, careful not to wake him as he did so. Even through the tough fabric, he could feel the hard swirl of the portion of the Triskelion within. A smile flittered across his face, and he looked back at the sleeping boy.

He hesitated for a moment, glancing over to where Hunith slept peacefully, never once doubting the good intentions of a man she remembered fondly as a boy scurrying in Gaius' footsteps, always eager to learn more. He looked back at the face of the little boy who’d inherited the power to control his pot of gold at the rainbow's end, and gave one mental apology to Hunith before carefully lifting him from his bed and carrying him away into the night.

It wasn't like he was going to do anything terrible to him. The boy would even benefit! He'd stand beside Julius as the handler of a great and terrible creature while the world fell at their feet. It was an existence much greater than what awaited him here in the squalor and ignobility of his backwater farming village. Once they stood at the top of the world, he'd bring Hunith to come live in riches with them. It wasn't as if he was separating mother and son forever.

That's what Julius told himself, anyways, when the voice that sounded far too close to Gaius' whispered he was kidnapping the son of one of his friends.

The weeks that followed were a nightmare.

When the boy awoke, no amount of reassurances or lies could settle him. No matter how many times he repeated that they were going on a quest and he could see his mother again once they'd found the treasure - not a complete lie, as he was careful not to mention _when_ afterwards the boy could see Hunith - the boy refused to settle. He screamed for his mother and fought viciously in the only way a child his size could: kicking and biting and scratching. With angry red marks down his face and bleeding semi-circles on his arms, Julius at his wits end managed to hold the boy down long enough to force valerian down his throat.

Though he knew he couldn't drug the child the entire way, he waited until they were deep in the woods of Camelot before reviving him.

When the boy screamed and fought, Julius simply sat down on the ground and said,

"Then go on home." When the boy looked stunned by his sudden change of mind, he waved his hands as though shooing off a fly. "Go on."

The boy looked around the unfamiliar land in trepidation, glancing in every which direction. Finally, he seemed to decide on one at random, and set off with a determination that would be adorable if it wasn't so laughable.

Julius fingered the pouch that now hung around his neck, and waited until nightfall to follow the glowing golden trail of magic left in the boy's wake by a rune etched onto the sole of his shoe while he slept. The boy lay huddled against a tree, shivering in the cold night air. He jumped at the sound of Julius' approach, and then relaxed when Julius smiled at him and held out a loaf of bread.

"Hungry?" he asked, knowing the boy hadn't eaten in nearly two days.

Cautiously the child took the bread, nibbling at first then downing it with a speed that made Julius fear he would choke. Miserably, he said, "I wanna go home."

"I told you," Julius said indulgently, "once you help me find the treasure, I'll take you home."

The child curled up on himself, but his defensive posture was at odds with the venomous glare he gave Julius, "I don't like you. I wanna go home."

But the boy made no moves to get away from him, and for the following weeks trudged grudgingly after Julius day after day, insistently asking if they were almost there yet until he wanted to throttle the little brat.

It was nearly after a month of living in each other's constant company, dodging patrols through the forests of Camelot, the Julius found the next step on his question: Iseldir's camp of druids.

Stealing the second piece of the Triskelion was strangely easy, and he wondered about the wisdom of using pacifists as guardians. The druids seemed utterly unperturbed that he had stolen from them, spending most of their confrontation giving him cryptically useless advice about how it was a trap and not worth any man's life. He ran back to the clearing he'd left the dragonlord's son in unhindered by them in the slightest.

He shook the boy awake and - predictably - the boy's first question was, "Did you get it? Can I go home now?"

"Not yet," he said for what felt like the millionth time.

The boy trudged his feet wearily, used to the disappointing answer by now. Julius led them onwards towards the city, determined to reach it by the next day.

It was time to retrieve the final piece of the puzzle.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

A woman knelt shaking and white faced on the floor of the throne room, two guards flanking her on either side with hands clamped down on her shoulders. Above her on the dais sat the king, stone-faced as he proclaimed down to her,

"You, Myfanwy, are charged with aiding and abetting an enemy of the Crown, harbouring a sorcerer, abusing your position in the Royal Household, and theft of a dangerous magical item. How do you plead?"

Her dumpy face convulsed at each charge against her. Pleading with the air of one who knew she would not be listened to, she burst out, "I didn't know! I swear on my life, I didn't know! I had no idea what he was planning!"

She glanced around the audience chamber frantically, meeting the eyes of those attending her trial one by one. Some looked at her in disgust or condemnation, some looked away as if the sight of her was too painful to watch, but no one stepped forwards to help her.

"He told me he wanted to meet with me alone, for a night together, some place we wouldn't be disturbed! I thought... I thought..."

She couldn't say anything else, a shame-faced blush marring her face. She was not an attractive woman, even she would admit to that. Vivid remnants from a childhood pox marred every dumpy fold of her face. Her hair, the colour of used washwater, fell limp against her shoulders like the old yarns of a mop.

Why had she ever imagined there might be a man interest in her, she wondered miserably from her grovelling position on the king's floor. She didn't know what she had been thinking. That it was her one chance to find love? That even if they'd only just met, he was more attentive to her than anyone she'd ever known? That her heart beat quickly when he told her she had lovely eyes?

She'd been a fool, she told herself bitterly now. She'd always thought herself immune to men because of her looks, and she never imagined the day would come when she fell prey to a sweet talker like some love-stricken pretty young face. She hadn't stopped to think, and made the worst choice of her life.

"You stole the keys to the vaults and handed them over to a wanted criminal," the king's hard voice cut her down.

"He was supposed to meet me there," she said pathetically, looking at the stone beneath her so she didn't have to see the looks in their eyes as she admitted to her foolishness. "It was supposed to be romantic."

The words sounded even more foolish said aloud. What must they all think of her, deceived so by such poor excuses? She continued, without looking at any of them. "I didn't know who he was. I had no idea he was wanted for studying the black arts. I thought he was just new to the city. I didn't know he was planning to steal anything!"

"You are an accomplice," the king said flatly. "You have desecrated the trust placed in you as a servant in my castle and stolen the keys to my vaults. Because of your actions, a dangerous breed of monsters I have taken great labours to wipe from the face of this earth may surface again."

She felt like she was submerged in water, making the words an indistinct buzz, but when the guards pulled her to her feet and dragged her from the room she knew what her sentence had been all the same. The doors slammed behind her, and the king addressed the witnesses to the trial.

"Let this serve as a lesson to all against the deceptive cunning of sorcerers and their ilk. We must remain vigilant against their evils, lest they creep in among us in disguise. Ignorant acts of aid are just as detrimental to this kingdom as willful wrongdoing. You must all be on guard."

He looked over each of the gathered members of the court to impress his point. Gaius looked especially dour-faced, and Uther knew he did not approve of the woman's sentence. However, he could not show her mercy when her actions might yet mean the lives of many under his protection. This was harsh, but necessary. If he reduced the sentence for her, then everyone would claim ignorance when brought before him. And regardless of what she thought she was doing, she _had_ willingly abused her position to steal the keys.

He would not think on her anymore. She had sown her crop, so she must reap it.

"Thankfully, not all misguided aid causes permanent damage. For even now, I have men out hunting for this Julius Borden. I assure you all; he _will_ be brought to justice.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

As he watched Borden carefully place the metal swirls into a stone circle on the wall with more swirls, Merlin just wanted it to be over with already.

"The Double Triskelion," Borden said casually as he began to turn the circle. "It's the symbol of your kind."

It wasn't the first time he'd made references to Merlin's "kind," but when Merlin asked the explanation had been long, boring, and involved a lot of names he didn't know and things he didn't understand. He didn't ask again.

The door opened outwards, and Merlin had to back up a few steps to avoid being hit. Smoke billowed down from above and he took a few steps further back, covering his face to try and get away from the nasty smell.

The smoke billowed out after him, and he ran.

Only once he was away from the smoky room, down the long stone halls that he'd come up with Borden, did Merlin stop running. And when he did, he remembered there was nowhere to run to.

The last time he'd run, he hadn't found his mother. All he'd done was run and run, and walk when he couldn't run any further, until it was dark and he was hungry and scared. He'd tried leaving a couple more times, whenever the lonely ache in his heart was too hard to bear, but he'd barely leave Borden's view before he remembered that he didn't know how to get home.

But Borden said he'd take him back home, to see his mother, after they got the treasure from the top of this tower.

So Merlin turned around and climbed the stairs again, panting as he covered his face with the neck of his tunic. The halls smelt of ash and rot now, but when he reached the doorway he'd run from before he could see clearly. The smoke was disappearing.

Merlin climbed over to where Borden lay slumped against the doorframe, and tried to shake him awake. After a moment of shaking, he hit him in the face. He still didn't wake. Merlin peeled back his eyelids, jumped on him, pushed him down the stairs, and yelled loudly in his ears, but Borden still slept.

Tears trickled down Merlin's face. It wasn't fair! He'd waited and waited for Borden to get the little swirly pieces of metal, being cold and hungry and missing his mother, and now when they were finally at the tower with the treasure in it, Borden fell asleep. If he slept, who was going to take Merlin home?

Why wasn't he waking up? What if he never woke up?

Maybe he just didn't want to wake up, Merlin thought hopefully. Sometimes Merlin wanted to go back to his happy dreams, when he opened his eyes and saw Borden's face instead of his mother's and knew he'd spend another day, all day, walking behind him wondering if they would ever find the stupid treasure.

But Merlin got up anyways, because if he didn't he knew he'd never find the treasure and if he never found the treasure then he'd never go home.

He bit his lip and tried to think of what would make Borden happy enough to want to wake up. The answer was easy: the treasure. The treasure at the top of this tower was all the Borden ever talked about, and his eyes went wide and crazy-scary looking when he did. If Merlin brought him the treasure, then Borden would want to wake up, he concluded happily, pleased with himself for coming up with an answer so easily.

And since Merlin would have already gotten the treasure, they could go home right away!

Merlin looked up the dark hallway, and grabbed Border's torch. It was heavy and his fingers weren't big enough to close around it, so he clutched it against his chest with both his hands, careful to keep the fire away from him.

He took a step forwards, expecting something awful to jump out at him. Maybe more smoke, maybe evil monsters hiding in the dark corners of the hallways, or maybe men in red lying in wait for him. When nothing happened, Merlin felt silly and kept walking.

The stairs going up to the top of the tower felt like they went on forever, and he had to stop several times. His hands were sweaty where they held the torch, but the thought of walking up and up the stairs in pitch black had him wipe them on his breeches and pick up the torch again each time he went on.

Finally, Merlin saw a light above him, and the stairs ended in a large, beautiful room with a giant egg on a pillar in the middle. Merlin's breath caught at the sight.

When Borden told him the treasure was an egg, he first thought that Borden was being silly, and when he realized that Borden was being serious decided that he wasn't _being_ silly, he _was_ silly. Merlin liked eggs, but he didn't see why anybody would go through all this trouble just to have a nice supper. When Merlin excitedly told him that his mother had chickens and if he took him home he could have tons and tons of eggs, Borden had just laughed.

Several times when Borden was occupied with something, Merlin searched out a bird's nest and endured the mother bird's angry pecking to bring Borden back a variety of little speckled eggs, but Borden always said they weren't good enough. He didn't want robin's eggs or blue jay's eggs, he laughed, he wanted a _dragon's_ egg. Merlin thought it was a stupid thing to get hung up on; what did it matter what type of egg you ate? And as Borden ate the bird eggs anyways, Merlin thought it was unfair he couldn't go home even though his face bled with peck marks to get them.

The egg on the pillar wasn't like any egg Merlin had ever seen before, and he thought that if there was any egg that deserved to be a treasure, it was that one.

It was huge, bigger than Merlin's head. It was also a smooth white as pure as snow, and shaped like a teardrop. Merlin wondered if that meant the egg was sad. It was all alone with no other eggs around it, it wasn't even in a nest with a mother dragon sitting on it to keep it warm.

"Where's your Mummy?" Merlin asked the egg, which of course didn't answer because that would be silly. Eggs don't talk.

He suddenly didn't want to give the egg to Borden. He wanted to go find the mother dragon and give her her egg back. Why had someone taken the egg away from her anyways?

He bet it was a stupid, selfish man like Borden who was only thinking about something stupid and selfish like his supper without caring that the egg might not have wanted to be taken away, that it didn't care about riches or greatness or the other things the stupid man talked on and on about. Maybe the egg just wanted to go home too.

But Merlin also wanted to go home, and he could only go home if he gave Borden the egg.

It sat there, shining in the light of the top of the tower unable to defend itself if Merlin should decide to hand it over to be fried for stupid Borden's stupid supper. He felt bad just thinking about it.

A hazy idea came to Merlin as he worried over whether giving Borden the egg was a bad thing to do. Borden would need a very big frying pan to cook the egg in, so he couldn't eat it right away. Merlin would tell him that his mother had a very big frying pan, and that she would be happy to fry it up for him. Then, once Borden took Merlin home, he'd tell his mother he didn't want Borden to eat the egg and she'd fry up chicken eggs instead when he wasn't looking.

Merlin was pleased with himself for coming up with such a good plan. He'd get home, the egg wouldn't be eaten, and Borden would have his stupid egg supper, and if he didn't like it because it wasn't a _dragon's_ egg it would serve him right for dragging Merlin all over the place to get it!

All his worries gone, Merlin walked up to the egg and reached up to take it, only to be stopped by the most unexpected obstacle: he was too little to reach the top of the pillar.

Of all the things to stop him from finishing this silly quest!

He tried to use his magic to lift it, but the egg stayed stuck where it was. Merlin blinked in surprise – he'd never not been able to lift anything he wanted to before – and tried harder to no avail. Merlin wondered if someone had glued the egg to the pillar, because that was what it felt like. It was a weird feeling, like he was playing a game of tug-a-war with someone much bigger than him, and he gave up, stumbling back a few steps panting.

Well, if he couldn't reach the egg the normal ways, Merlin thought determinedly, then he'd just have to climb the pillar itself. After awkward heaving and scrambling of limbs, Merlin pulled himself up so that his elbows rested at the top. Face to face with the egg, he grinned triumphantly and grabbed it, falling on his back to the floor with the egg held tight against his chest.

His moment of elation was quickly interpreted by ominous creaks and groans all around him, and to Merlin's horror the floor crumbled away beneath him, and he was falling.

Terrified, he shut his eyes and hugged tight to the egg, curling up in a ball.

When he finally dared open his eyes again, he was surrounded by a glowing white light radiating from the egg, and was hovering a few feet off the ground. Though beneath him the stone foundation stood, in a circle spreading out from him was rummage where before there had been the tower. The sun shone down on the wreckage, not a wall left standing. Merlin stretched out his toe, and slowly he fell to the ground. The light from the egg dimmed when he was firmly on his feet.

Staring around at the waste, a horrible thought occurred to him: how was he ever supposed to find Borden in all this?

"Stop! Don't move, you're under arrest!" a man's voice said from behind him. Something smooth and cold rested against Merlin's check, and if he made his eyes go funny he could see it was thin and silver-coloured.

Rough hands grabbed him and spun him around – rather rude, thought Merlin, he would have turned if they had told him to so why did they say not to move and then move him? – so that he was looking up into the face of a dirty blond man dressed in a red cloak ringed by more men in red.

Merlin's eyes went wide as saucers, and he was keenly aware of the fact that he was standing in the open with nowhere nearby to hide.

The first man in red took the egg from him, handing it off to another man in red nearby who threw it carelessly into a bag. Then a different man in red pulled out a rope, and stepped forwards to bind Merlin's hands.

Panicking, Merlin tripped the man approaching him with his mind. Fearful murmurs broke out among the men in red, and the man nearest him raised his hand and brought it crashing down behind Merlin's head. His skull hurt, and he thought he might have bitten his tongue because he could taste blood.

Everything went black.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Merlin was bored.

He was also scared, and cold, and his head hurt, and he wished there was somebody with him so he could ask where he was and how he'd gotten there, but above all he was bored.

He'd woken up in a stone room with a tiny crack letting sunlight in far above his head. The room was bare except for a pile of straw in one corner, and one of the walls was made out of long thin pieces of metal with big gaps in between them. The door was on that wall, but when Merlin tried to open it it wouldn't open, even when he'd tried to use magic on it.

He'd tried yelling, but the echo of his voice on stone was his only answer. He was completely alone, and there was nothing to distract him from that awful fact. He sat glumly on the pile of straw, watching the small patch of sunlight slowly make its way across the cell floor as the day went on.

When he heard echoing footsteps in the distance he jumped to his feet and raced towards the hole-filled wall, pressing against the metal so hard he was sure little rectangles were being carved into his cheeks.

"HELLO!" he hollered hopefully, "HELLO! I'M STUCK HERE! IS ANYONE THERE?"

The footsteps were getting closer and closer, and then suddenly stopped. Merlin craned his head, but he couldn't see anything except the empty corridor out the stone room. He heard an old man's voice say,

"Food for the prisoner."

Two sets of footsteps approached, bringing an old man and man in red into his view. Merlin immediately withdrew from the metal wall as though burned by it, backing away from the man in red warily. His heart beat fast in his chest, and he wished desperately for somewhere to hide.

The man in red fiddled with something, and the door came open. The man in red stayed on the outside, and the old man walked into the room. He smiled at Merlin, but it looked a little forced.

"Hello, I've brought you supper."

Merlin didn't say anything. Even if the old man wasn't wearing red, he came in with a man in red. Merlin couldn't trust him.

The old man put down the tray on the floor, and turned to go. Merlin's insides felt all jumbly-wumbly: he wanted the man in red and his friend to go away, but he also wanted someone to tell him where he was and take him to Borden, who would take him to his mother.

The old man paused outside the door, and pulled a small vial out of his pocket. "There's been reports of a rare strain of mildew growing down here that is harmless in small amounts, but can be lethal for people constantly exposed to it." The man in red looked alarmed, and the old man held out the vial to him. "This is an antidote, drink it and you should be fine."

The man took the vial and downed it in one gulp, grimacing as he handed the now empty container back to the old man. "Thanks, Gaius."

The old man walked away, and the man in red fiddled with little pieces of metal at the door again before going too. After his footsteps had faded, Merlin warily approached the metal wall again, tugging at the door. Once again, it didn't open.

The man in red could open it, though, with those little pieces of metal. Merlin closed his eyes, and willed the jingly things to come to him.

It was much harder than he thought it would be, almost as bad as when he tried to lift the dragon egg. Merlin's face scrunched up in concentration, and he pulled with all his strength. Like his opponent's hands got sticky and he couldn't hold on anymore, he felt the metal bits give all of a sudden. A metallic clang echoed right in front of him, and Merlin opened his eyes to see the ring of metal bits had crashed into one of the bars.

It took him a while of fiddling to work out how the man in red had gotten the door open, but at last something went _click_ and then the door went _creeeeeeeak_ and Merlin was free. Looking both ways down the long hallway and seeing no one, he pressed himself against the stone wall and tiptoed sideways down the way the two men from earlier had come from.

When he got to the corner he peeked around, and to his surprise he found the man in red from earlier slumped at a table, snoring with a glass tumbled over in front of him as if he'd been drinking and suddenly fell asleep. There was a staircase just past him, and Merlin tiptoed cautiously towards it, keeping an eye on the sleeping man in red the whole time. Once he was at the foot of the stairs, Merlin gave up on stealth and started to run.

After a while, Merlin had to admit to himself that he had no idea where he was going. It was like the mazes of old shawls his parents used to make for him, but this was harder because he couldn't look at the pattern from above to plan ahead. He climbed stairs, turned corners, and walked and walked but never seemed to get anywhere.

He was hopelessly lost.

If he kept walking, he'd just get more lost. But if he stopped walking, then he'd never get unlost. And all the while, there were men in red everywhere he had to keep ducking behind corners and doubling back to avoid.

Suddenly, loud clanging bells started ringing, and Merlin heard shouts and footsteps coming from both ends of the hallway he was in. Panicking, he glanced around for somewhere to hide. The only place was a hole-filled metal door with a staircase going down behind it. Merlin pulled on the door, but it wouldn't open. Panicking, he pulled on it with his mind and he heard something click. With a creak that was too loud for Merlin's liking, the door opened. Merlin lost no time in slipping past it, shutting it behind him, and racing down the stairs.

The stairs felt like they went on and on forever, deeper and deeper underground. There was no light; Merlin had to keep his arm on the wall to avoid falling to what would probably be his death. He wondered if it was a stairway that went down into the centre of the earth, and why anyone had built it to go so far down. He couldn't even hear the clanging of the bells anymore.

After what seemed like forever, when he put his foot down it was met with ground at the same level of his other foot. Taking a few more steps, it became clear he'd hit the end of the stairway. There was a pale light ahead, and Merlin ran forwards eagerly.

The hall opened into a massive cave which seemed more than just a cave. Merlin couldn't see any way for light to get in, but the entire thing shone with just enough light to let him see. Great pillars of rough cave wall rose like colonnades to support the massive open structure, arching in places to create great rocky halls that stretched further than Merlin could see. Even though the rough rock spoke of natural formation, the sheer size and beauty of the cave made Merlin feel that it could not have arisen unless someone had designed it.

Everything in the cave, from the soft glow to the misty air, buzzed with magic. It felt like the stone itself was alive.

The path in front of Merlin fell into a sheer cliff, falling so far he could not see the bottom. Like an island, a single pillar of rock rose twenty feet or so ahead of him, forming a great platform that was unreachable. On that platform gleamed a pure white teardrop shape with the pale white gleam of moonlight, even though there was no moon.

Merlin was delighted and confused: how had the egg gotten there?

Tentatively he gave a mental tug to the egg, and it flew right into his arms without the least resistance. Merlin sat down, exhausted by all the running and walking he'd done that day, and ran his hands over the egg admiringly.

It was the smoothest, prettiest, whitest thing he'd ever seen.

He felt better now that he had the egg, even though he was still lost and hungry and wanted to go home. But the egg radiated warmth like he was cuddled up against another person, and any kind of company was comforting, even if it was just an egg.

He pressed his cheek against the smooth white surface, and closed his eyes. _BA-thump BA-thump BA-thump_ , beat the egg's heart, a slow soothing rhythm of life. Merlin sat like that, hugging the egg and listening to its heartbeat, and slowly his mind became hazy. It was like when he was sleepy, but instead of the world getting indistinct it was becoming clearer.

Inside the egg was not runny white and yellow yoke, like in a chicken's egg, but a fully formed baby dragon waiting to hatch. It was curled up snuggly within the shell, squished in its deep slumber. It was dreaming of things it had not yet experienced: open night skies with the stars shining down on its leathery white wings, the feel of dew in the morning grass, and the smell of salty ocean air. It dreamed and dreamed, without knowing anything of the world around it, waiting for the day it would be called into consciousness at last.

He felt the little dragon's sleeping mind more clearly with each passing moment his head lay against the egg, until he knew it as well as his own.

" _Aithusa_ ," he called softly, the name in his mind as naturally as if he had always known it.

The smooth shell beneath his cheek cracked.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

"You've found him?" the mug of a soothing herbal infusion that Gaius called _tea_ after a rumoured medicinal drink from the East nearly slipped from Hunith's numb fingers. She remembered it at the last second, and hurriedly placed it on Gaius' table to avoid a spill. "Where is he?"

Gaius seemed strangely reluctant to speak, "I found him wandering around the Cavern of Uhelgoad while I went to check on the egg."

His hesitant manner gave Hunith a dreadful suspicion. "Is he hurt?"

"No," Gaius was quick to assure her. "No, he's fine. Hungry and dehyrdated, of course, as he hasn't had anything since he escaped two days ago, but otherwise he's fine. There's been a… complication though."

Of course there had, Hunith thought bitterly. Why should things go smoothly just for once, when these last few months had been pure hell?

She'd looked for Merlin for a three days before she first set out for Camelot. Julius had been Gaius' pupil, and though the link was tenacious it was possible that he would know more. He hadn't; he'd known even less than her in fact, as he didn't even know that Julius had been looking for a dragon's egg. Once she told him they'd pored over his many books to no avail.

Finally, after two weeks of fruitlessly looking for answers she returned to Ealdor, hoping that Julius would return with her son once he had finished his damned quest. Gaius' promise to send word to her immediately if he learned anything new was fulfilled a week ago, when a messenger handed her a note saying that the vaults of Camelot had been broken into.

By the time Hunith arrived in the city, Merlin was being held prisoner. The two of them quickly devised a simple plan to ferret Merlin out of the dungeons. To her horror, to even that had gone wrong; after Gaius slipped the guard the sleeping draught, a guard coming off duty hailed him and started telling him his medical complaints. He followed Gaius all the way back to his chambers to get the cure for his woes, and by the time Gaius was able to sneak back into the dungeons he arrived to find the cell door open and empty. They could only conclude that Merlin had somehow used magic to escape, despite Gaius' incredulous disbelief that a child could bypass some kind of anti-magic spell that was on the dungeons.

They had searched the castle from top to bottom, but they could find neither hide nor hair of her child. The only comfort about the situation was that Merlin somehow miraculously managed to evade Uther's men as well.

"The dragon egg has hatched."

Hunith brought a hand to her head, kneading her temples with her thumbs. Why couldn't anything be simple, for once? Selfishly, she wished Gaius had just "properly disposed" of the egg as he told Uther he had.

What were the chances that Merlin would agree to set the baby animal free into the wild? What were the chances of it surviving if she did, with all manner of natural predators as well as human to contend with?

What the hell was she supposed to do with a baby dragon?

Balinor's words about his kin echoed in her mind like snatches of poetry, and she knew to abandon it would be akin to betraying him. But how could she take care of it? She didn't even know what dragons ate, and her neighbours would never accept that her son's new pet was a giant fire-breathing creature of magic!

Where was she supposed to hide a _dragon_?

"I don't suppose you want to take care of it?" she joked with a sigh. She shoved the matter to the back of her mind; what was truly important was that Merlin was found. Abruptly, she pushed herself up off the table. "Could you take me to this cavern? I'd like to see my son."

She gathered the little supplies she had brought with her from Ealdor and food enough for two for the journey home. Gaius waited patiently while she did so, and then led her into the depths of the castle down a long flight of stairs to a vast cavern that even Hunith could tell was humming with magic.

At the mouth of the cavern sat Merlin, petting a hen-sized winged lizard curled up in his lap like a contented cat. He jumped up, startling the dragon which trilled its confusion and flapped its leathery wings clumsily to regain its balance.

Merlin shot forwards, flinging his arms around her waist. "Mother!"

Hunith sunk to her knees, wrapping her arms around Merlin and reveling in the bliss that was just having him with her. He'd grown taller since she'd last seen him.

A questioning trill came beside them, and Hunith looked over to see the dragon standing there, head cocked to one side as it blinked up at her curiously. Merlin drew back, and said in lisp-free words that pained her anew as she was reminded of the months of his life she had missed, "Mother, this is Aithusa. Aithusa, this is my mother. I told you about her, remember?"

The dragon made a series of happy little clicks as though in answer.

"Aithusa says nice to meet you," Merlin interpreted solemnly, and Hunith had no idea whether that was actually something he knew or just the result of a child's imagination.

Either way, she parroted back solemnly, "Likewise."

Two sets of big, imploring blue eyes stared up at her. "Can Aithusa come home with us?"

It would have taken a cold-heartedness that she didn't possess to refuse those looks. Hunith steeled herself for difficulties to come, and told herself the route back to Ealdor was long. She would think of something on the way, because she had to and when there were things she had to do she would find a way to do them, somehow.

Bracing herself for many trials to come about because of the mad decision she was about to make, Hunith nodded. The delighted look in Merlin's eyes was worth every last stress mark this would add to her face.

"This cavern has another exit that comes out in the Darkling Wood," Gaius interjected, apparently feeling that he had given them sufficient time for their family reunion. "I'll lead you there."

Hunith said sincerely, "Thank you, for everything."

As the king's trusted adviser of all things magical, he was privy to information a foreign peasant woman would never otherwise hear, could go places she would not be permitted to such as the dungeons, and his word on certain matters – such as the destruction of the dragon's egg – held unquestioned authority. She could not have done this without his help.

Gaius looked uncomfortable with her gratitude, and beckoned her towards a long, winding stair in the cliff face that she hadn't noticed. "We'd best set off now, the route is a long one."

Hunith picked up Merlin. She did not spend months and months anxiously wondering if she would ever see him again only to have his clumsiness make him trip on a loose stone and plummet to his death just after their reunion. Aithusa fluttered onto Merlin's shoulders, wrapping around him like an oversized scarf.

"Let's go home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't sure I could get into the head of a four-year-old, but it was surprisingly easy. I'm not sure I want to know what that says about me.
> 
> The trap in Ashkanar's tomb was a stupid one. He goes to all that trouble to hide the egg, then has the building come crashing down around it so that it smashes into a million pieces? So I'm saying there's some kind of fail-safe on the egg itself so that it would be unharmed by a crumbling building and that holding onto the egg saved Merlin's life. A stupid thing for Ashkanar have overlooked, perhaps, but then his entire trap wasn't very well thought out. Why make a key at all if you're going to set a trap that will come crashing down on anyone who tries to take it, with no Anhora-eqsue moral tests or anything to distinguish between someone like Merlin and someone like Borden? Just the building, smashing down on whoever takes the egg, and even that didn't work on Merlin! I think his wisdom must have been in moral matters, not trap planning.


	11. 0x11 - The Red and White Dragons (Part 1)

Will was crouched on the ground scribbling in the dirt in great, jerky strokes of a long twig. Merlin took a step backwards, a half-formed idea of sneaking back into the cover of the trees floating through his head, when without looking up his friend demanded.

"Where have you been?"

"Just taking a walk," Merlin tried to be nonchalant.

Will was stubbornly fixated on the random lines he was infliction on the dirt. "Again?"

"Yeah," Merlin laughed weakly.

Will dropped the stick, letting it fall on the marred ground with a small dull clatter. He looked Merlin in the eyes without blinking when he said, "You know you can tell me anything."

Guilt stabbed him, and the smile he forced onto his face felt wobbly. "Of course."

Something in Will's face twitched, and his next words simmered in barely bit back anger. "Because that's what friends do, right? They tell each other everything."

It felt like his tongue had turned to lead. He couldn't respond; he had no idea what to say. He wished his mother was there. She had this way of making everything seem natural, of sweeping uncomfortable things under the rug without drawing attention to what she was doing, that Merlin did not possess. His mother told him it was because he was an honest boy. If so, it had certainly done him no favours.

Will's face darkened when he didn't respond, and he stomped off in the opposite direction of Merlin, biting over his shoulders. "Next time, I think I'll join you on your little 'walk.'"

Merlin made his way home, dejected. He told himself it had to be this way and it wasn't his fault, but it didn't make him feel any better. His mother looked up from where she was grinding herbs and frowned in concern when she saw the slump in her son's shoulders.

"Was something wrong with Aithusa?"

Merlin shook his head. "She's fine."

After living with a stir-crazy baby dragon for a year - during which Merlin's mother became increasingly wound up as she was forced to come up with excuses for the strange noises in her home and the return of the closed window shutters - even Merlin could not deny that Aithusa had become too large to hide in their small house. Gone were the days when at Merlin's command she could be silenced and stuffed out of sight whenever a knock came at the door, and their neighbour's questions were becoming increasingly difficult to answer. And so, with a heavy heart and much tears, on a moonless night Merlin and Hunith led Aithusa from their cottage to where she now dwelt, explaining everything to her as best they could and above all impressing on her the need to stay tucked away unseen.

These days, Aithusa lived in the Tunnels about half an hour outside the village, as they were the only place within walking distance sheltered and large enough to comfortably hide a horse-sized dragon. Merlin frequently went to go see her thinking it was similar to what going to visit a favourite aunt or cousin might be like if he had any. She always listened to what he had to say, and her wordless understanding of all the struggles he faced - between his "ill-omened birth" overshadowing everything he did, Ingild's nerve-wracking annual "check-ups," and the heart-stopping near misses with the villagers where he was left scrambling for explanations while he prayed they hadn't seen what he thought they did - surpassed that of even his mother. Aithusa was, after all, even more familiar with having to hide who she was than Merlin.

He'd always felt a special connection with her, as the only other being he knew who was not another villager puttering about their magic-less lives. When Samhain approached and the air positively sang with the flow of life, she was as giddy as he. When he magicked shapes in the campfire he made in the winter during his longer visits, she would breathe out rings of smoke in surprisingly complex designs. The snatches of time spent with Aithusa were like letting out a breath he'd been holding in, times when he could just be himself with no pretending or lies involved.

Just thinking of the gloriously freeing morning he'd spent lazing around with his dragon friend cheered him up a bit. Unfortunately, his mother had still seen he was upset when he came in.

When Hunith tilted her head, not letting the matter drop, Merlin admitted as vaguely as possible hoping she would leave it at just this, "I had a bit of a row with Will."

He braced himself, and sure enough immediately Hunith stilled her pestle and asked worriedly, "About what?"

Merlin shrugged, "Just stuff. It's not important."

"Merlin," his mother wrapped an entire warning into just one word.

"He wasn't happy I disappeared off again without telling him where I went," Merlin admitted reluctantly. Immediately - as he knew she would - Hunith looked truly worried. Before she could start in on one of the warnings Merlin had heard over and over for years, he added, "But I didn't tell him where I went or about Aithusa or my gifts or anything. He'll get over it."

Hunith only seemed slightly appeased. Sighing, she started grinding again. "You know what will happen if you tell Will." Merlin could have recited along if he wanted to. "Even if he doesn't turn on you, Will will tell one of his friends, who'll tell one of his friends, who'll tell one of his friends, and so on until the entire village knows. And once the entire village knows, do you think we'll be able to still live here? Even if they don't turn on us directly..."

"I know," Merlin cut her off in exasperation, unable to listen any longer. "It would only take one person going to King Cenred or King Uther for me to end up like Oilell or Father."

Hunith shot him a disapproving look for interrupting, but relented. "I don't like it any more than you do," she said softly, pleading for understanding from her son. "And I know it's hard for you, but this is the way it has to be."

Merling mumbled a forced agreement, and Hunith suggested, "Why don't you leave off visiting Aithusa for a while, so Will doesn't have anything to be suspicious of?"

"But it's her birthday next week!" Merlin protested. "She's turning five; I promised I'd celebrate it with her!"

Aithusa, Merlin felt, enjoyed the visits even more so than him. Whenever he called her he felt pure joy through their link, washing over the melancholy that settled over her in his absences. He tried to go see her as often as possible - knowing he was the only kin she had in the world and the only company she could welcome into her abode - but it was so hard to slip away from the village unnoticed. He'd managed it for five years through a rich variety of half-baked excuses, enduring gaining a reputation of cutting corners and laziness as well as all around eccentricity - some of his excuses had been downright peculiar, even he had to admit that - but it would appear he reached the limit of what he could pass off as normal boyhood retreats into the woods.

"All the same..."

"I'll be careful," Merlin promised. "No one will even notice I'm gone."

Hunith softened at the pleading look directed at her. "Oh alright. But you _must_ be careful; if Will is noticing your absences, others will be too."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

The days leading to Aithusa's birthday were long and boring, as Will was going out of his way to ignore Merlin. With his only village friend not speaking to him, Merlin was positively miserable. After this birthday visit, he decided, he'd have to leave off going to see Aithusa for a few months, for the sake of her safety as much as keeping his secrets. If anyone in the village were to find her, he shuddered to think of what they would do to her. She could probably hold off two or three people, but if the village banded together or informed the king's men then even her fiery breath might not be sufficient to protect her.

She was a reptile, he tried to reassure himself, so she should be sleeping most of the winter anyways and therefore wouldn't be too lonely without him.

It still felt like he was abandoning her for Will. But if he chose to keep on visiting her, he would be abandoning Will for her as well as risking both their safety.

Why did his life have to have so many secrets?

Merlins tried not to think of how he would break the news to Aithusa that her only surviving kin would not be coming to see her for a long while. What a horrible birthday present. What would he do if on his birthday his mother said she was going away for a few months because she didn't want to be seen with him?

On the day itself Merlin slipped away after completing his morning chores, but his attempt to get out the village unseen was ruined when a tumble of boys a few years older than him stepped out of one of the outer cottages. They were shoving each other playfully and laughing, then one nudged the rest and pointed to him. The laughter died off, but uncomforting smiles remained on the faces of all except for one red-headed boy who was glancing between Merlin and his friends in fright.

"Hey, where are you off to this time?" Called the tallest one, moving to block Merlin's path.

Merlin tried to dart around him, but more boys blocked his path. The red-headed boy edged away from the group, quietly retreating back into the house. "None of your business. Let me pass."

"Yeah, let him pass, Dareth," guffawed a pimply boy three year older than Merlin, "This here is a verified little old lady killer; if you get on his bad side you'll be struck by lightning!"

The boy blocking him stumbled back a step and clutched a hand to his chest with comically wide eyes. Slowly he looked up to the clear blue sky as though he saw something coming and fell to his knees in the dirt. He sank to the ground, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his face twisted in a ridiculous expression of mock death.

Laughter rippled through the boys even though Merlin vainly retorted, "Your face will get stuck like that if you..."

"What's going on here!" barked a red-headed middle-aged woman from the house the boys had exited, the red-headed boy half-hidden behind her and looking down to avoid his friends' gazes. They looked miffed that he'd told on them.

"Never mind," she snapped when one of them opened his mouth, and she turned to face Merlin. Despite appearances, he felt as though she wasn't actually looking him in the eyes when she said in the slightly quivery fake-friendly voice she only used when addressing Merlin. "Please forgive them, they're only boys. They don't know what they're doing."

"You lot!" she snapped to the others, who took a step back from the ferocity in her voice. "Apologize, this instant!"

"It's fine, Catrin," Merlin said quickly before the other village boys were given further ammunition to use against him in the future. He could hear the taunts already, _you're such a wuss you need women to win your fights for you!_ "I'll just be on my way."

Merlin continued the rest of the way to the Tunnels put out not just by the embarrassing confrontation with its embarrassing resolution, but that his retreat from the village hadn't been nearly as quiet as he hoped. His mother was going to kill him; the whole village would be talking about that embarrassingly public display and be speculating on why he had wandered off into the forest afterwards. Will would surely hear of it and not speak to him for weeks.

"Aithusa!" he called at the mouth of the Tunnels. Inside it was so cold he could see his breath, so he preferred to meet with her outside.

Immediately he felt an excited warm greeting through their mental link, and he waited patiently. After a few minutes had passed he heard the sound of her running - the confines of the Tunnels were too narrow for her to comfortably fly through - and she stepped into the sunlight with her pure white scales shining.

Behind him came the sound of crashing in the bushes, and Merlin swung around. Lying at the edge of the trees was Will sprawled on his bottom, looking just as terrified as Merlin felt.

"It's not what it looks like," Merlin said quickly, which was a dumb thing to say because yes, it was _exactly_ what it looked like. Will's best friend Merlin snuck out to secretly meet with a dragon was what it looked liked, and that was exactly what it was. There was no other explanation he could give for what Will was witnessing.

Not even his mother would be able to gloss this over. How was it possible to goof up this bad? Will had flat-out told him he planned on following him next time he snuck out, and his exit from the village had been anything but quiet. How did he not see this coming?

Aithusa trilled behind him in confusion. An image of Will floated through their mental link, a wordless question of _friend or foe_.

 _« Friend_ , _»_ he thought to her desperately. The last thing he needed in this situation was for Aithusa to raise her hackles and roar – or worse, try to incinerate Will. _« Friend, definitely a friend!_ _»_

Aithusa craned her neck towards Will, who squeaked and scrambled away on all fours. Aithusa started towards him and Will looked one second away from bolting. "Wait!" Merlin cried. "Wait, she just wants to say hello! She won't hurt you, I promise!"

"SHE?!" choked Will. "What the hell, Merlin! How do you even know it's a girl!"

Merlin didn't answer – he could hardly tell Will that when the dragon projected thoughts into his mind the "voice" was feminine. Will finally found his feet, and started warily making his way forwards. He kept a watchful eye on Aithusa but addressed Merlin when he demanded heatedly, "How long has this been going! When were you going to tell me about your pet dragon!"

He felt Aithusa's outrage at being deemed Merlin's 'pet' but he was too preoccupied with his human friend's outrage to address hers. He had no idea how to respond; somehow, he felt that Will would not be happy with the truthful answers 'five years' and 'never'.

Will seemed to guess at at least the latter of them though, because he bit out with a harsh laugh. "Oh, well I see how it is then! I thought we were friends!"

"We are!" Merlin protested, stung by the past tense.

"No," Will with the same heat, but his voice was clenched in more than just anger. Hurt bled through when he said, "Friends trust each other. They don't sneak around behind each other's backs and keep secrets."

Merlin opened his mouth to say something, anything, he didn't know what but he couldn't lose his only human friend like this –

And then the world shattered.

Merlin barely even registered that he fell to his knees, hands clutching his splitting head. The splintering world moved slowly around him so that he saw Will's eyes widen fraction by fraction and his lips curl into an _M_ as his face oh so slowly was changing expressions to what Merlin assumed would end in concern but at the moment was just a bizarre twist of muscles. Aithusa's foot raised in the air and her neck started a motion that would eventually end in her turning her head, while at the same time Will's arm started stretching towards Merlin.

Panicking at this weirdness, Merlin reached out to both of them, grabbing hold as if that would somehow make them move at normal speed. He barely felt smooth scales and course wool under his fingers before the ground disappeared from under him. All turned to black, and every fiber of his being burned as though submerged in acid.

The world screamed in pain around him, as though nature itself had been dealt a fatal blow.

Groans filled his ears, and he felt the hard press of stone beneath him. He was lying on his back now on a smooth but uneven surface, staring up at a blackness interrupted only a white halo glowing in contrast around an equally black circle. All around him was nothing but darkness.

"What the hell?!" came Will's shocked voice from slightly below him to his right. He could hear Aithusa scrambling to his left. Will continued voicing the feelings Merlin was in too much pain to. "What the hell is this?! What just happened!?"

"Leoht," a man's voice came from further away. A floating pale light came from the right, illuminating their surroundings. What Merlin saw was not comforting in the slightest.

Gone was the forest, the Tunnels, and everything familiar save the clothes on his back and his two friends. Merlin was lying on a great rectangle slab of stone that was cracked in half, surrounded by a complex hexagonal pattern scorched into the grass. To all sides lay men in long dark cloaks which hid their entire bodies – for all Merlin knew some of them may actually be rather buff women – who were sprawled as though they'd been knocked over by some great force.

The robed man nearest the light got to his feet, his hood casting strange shadows upon the hollows of his face. The other hooded figure also straightened, but instead of getting to their feet they got to their knees, bowing to the one man standing.

It was at this point that Merlin knew whatever had happened, he was in deeper than he could handle.

"Which of you is the fatherless boy warlock Emrys?" The boss robed man demanded, sounding as though he was rather used to demanding things out of people. He looked back and forth between Will and Merlin in confusion, like the fact that there were two of them was an unexpected and unwelcome complication.

Merlin exchanged bewildered looks with Will, matters such as hidden dragons put aside for the moment in the face of… _this_. Whatever _this_ was. Will gave Merlin a look as though asking him to explain, but Merlin shook his head. He had no idea, about any of _this_.

Will turned to the man, false bravado in his voice as he snarked the way he always did to hide his fear, "Neither of us. You got the wrong people."

"Impossible," the man said with such complete confidence that it was irritating. "My spells are flawless. I thrice checked the algorithm; there's no chance for deviation or error. Now stop wasting my time and admit which of you is Emrys."

"I've never even heard of this bloke," Will said, peeved that he hadn't been believed.

"Me neither," Merlin managed, forcing himself to speak through the pain. He donned all the manners his mother had spent years trying to instill in him, even though he was in no way favourable towards the strangers. "Look, this is a mistake. We're not this Emrys person, so could you please do… whatever it is you did to get us here, to put us back?"

The man's face hardened and he raised a hand as though to strike them from afar, "Forbærne!"

A ball of fire shot towards Merlin, slowing as he panicked. The ball inched closer so slowly he had time to sit up, bewildered, and then berate himself for being more concerned with time's inconsistencies than with his slowly approaching death. So Merlin did the sensible thing, and threw himself off the stone alter.

The danger passed, time regained its normal passage and he felt the heat of the fireball pass over the back of his head, perhaps singeing a few hairs. He landed on Aithusa, who reared, roaring and breathing fire at the man who dared attack her kin.

"Stop! Stop!" Merlin cried, horrified. The man may have tried to maim him, but he was their only hope of getting back. Not only were they in an unknown place, but the bizarre nighttime setting when it had been noon not five minutes ago did nothing to inspire Merlin that it was anywhere he might have heard of before.

Aithusa reeled back, flaring her wings and raising her hackles threateningly. But she stopped her attack as asked, and a pale shimmering globe dropped from around the unscathed man. The man's eyes seized on Merlin, and he ordered the robed figures still prostrate at his feet. "Seize that one! He used magic, he's Emrys."

Hands clamped around Merlin from all directions, dragging him forwards. When he stumbled they lifted him up so he was being carried horizontally by half a dozen different people, each holding one of his limbs. They were chanting something he couldn't understand in low voices as they carried him. Staring up at the starless night sky with its one strange halo of light, he insisted over the noise of their chanting,

"No, my name's Mer–" what was he doing? Merlin thought, aghast. Why was he telling complete strangers met in very suspicious circumstances his name? "Mer… Mer… _Myr_ ddin."

No one answered him, not even to insist that he really was some person called Emrys. They continued carrying him away somewhere as if he had not even spoken, like now that they thought they knew who was Emrys nothing else mattered except taking him whenever they planned on taking him.

Behind him he could hear Will protesting angrily, and he must have come running after them because Merlin could hear his indignant demands to _let go of him_ and _put him DOWN!_ the whole way. There were several times when he heard grunts of pain from Will, and he tried to twist to see what had happened but only saw the dark cloaks on all sides. Aithusa flew overhead keeping pace with him, gleaming white in the conjured light against the black sky. It was comforting to know she was nearby in case he needed her.

After what felt like eternity, the men in cloaks set him on his feet. Free to see his surroundings by the lone conjured light, Merlin couldn't figure out why they had taken him all this way to what was essentially an empty field atop a hill. There were tents thrown up around the periphery, and building supplies lay scattered around, but otherwise there was nothing noteworthy about the place.

Aithusa swooped down, rubbing her head against his chest affectionately as she took her place beside him. Merlin was grateful for her support, it gave him the confidence to ask, "So, what am I here for? Is there something you need me to do, or…?"

These people wanted a fatherless boy warlock named Emrys. His name wasn't Emrys, but his father was dead, he was a boy, and he was a warlock, so maybe if he could do whatever they wanted this Emrys for they'd send him back.

The boss robed man pulled a tackily jewel crusted dagger out of a fold in his cloak. "You are here," he said solemnly, "to be sacrificed. With your blood mixed into the mortar, I shall at last be able to build my tower."

Merlin didn't react. Surely he didn't hear that right. There was no way that was what the man actually said.

"WHAT?" blustered Will, who squeezed through some of the robed men to latch onto Merlin – on the opposite side as Aithusa, Merlin noted dully – and pull him backwards away from the boss robed man. Their backs hit a wall of the lackey robed men, tightened together to bar their way, and massive strong hands seized them by the shoulders so they could not escape. "Are you mad?!"

"It's to be named Dinas Emrys, in your memory," the man said, still addressing Merlin as though Will was a non-existence not worth responding to.

He slid the dagger from its sheath, and Merlin forced himself out of denial. He tried to trip the men holding him with his mind, summon things to aid him in a fight, push the boss away, anything he knew he could do with magic and then some things he didn't. Nothing happened, and Merlin was reminded that these people had transported him from the Tunnels outside Ealdor to wherever this was. They knew how to use spells and enchantments, and he didn't. If Merlin had ever wondered how his untaught magic would fare against trained opponents, he had his answer right in front of him.

Merlin was halfway through a devising a frantic scheme where Aithusa breathed fire – even though it had been useless before – and then he and Will ran like mad with nowhere to go because he had _no clue where he was_ while praying the murderous sorcerers' magic mysteriously failed them, when suddenly a woman's angry screams disrupted everything.

From a tent richer in colour than many surrounding tents tumbled a young woman – hardly more than a girl, really – with long, dark disheveled hair dressed in a pure white nightdress. Her eyes locked on the boss robed man and she raised her finger to point accusatively to him,

" _You!_ What have you done? Woe to be us, for you have cast doom upon us all!"

"Vivienne, for once I don't care whether you've seen the sea swallow me up in a tide of blood," the robed man said in annoyance. "Drink a potion and go back to sleep, that's all you're good for."

"I do not need to possess the Sight to see you have incurred the wrath of gods, the evidence is clear as day, or rather as day _would_ be if there _was_ day!" The woman hitched up her skirts and ran towards the boss. From her tent and others men swarmed out and ran after her. "Night, when it is not yet noon! Vortigern, you imbecilic swine, what have you done?!"

"Forsuwung," the robed man, Vortigern, enchanted coldly. Though the woman's lips still opened and closed, no sound came through. "If you haven't had a vision, don't waste my time with your superstitious nattering. May I remind you that I am the King of Camelot and have better things to do than listen to a woman's prattling? It's an eclipse, nothing more."

The men chasing the disheveled young woman Vivienne caught up with her, and seized her by the shoulders when she was ten paces from Vortigern. She struggled in forced muteness against the men holding her, but couldn't break free. Vortigern turned his back on her dismissively, and with the brief distraction over focused his attention back on Merlin. He took several steps forwards, dagger raised ominously.

"Wait," Merlin said impotently, eyes focused hypnotically on the shining steel of the dagger. Will's grip on his arm tightened and Aithusa shifted closer to him, rumbling a defensive growl.

Vortigern did no such thing, and Merlin was a hair's breath away for yelling for Aithusa to incinerate him and trying his half-baked escape plan just for the slim chance it might work and get him away from this nutcase sorcerer – using the blood of children to build towers and calling himself the King of Camelot when everyone knew that it was Uther Pendragon, how did Merlin get caught up with this lunatic? – when someone else created another distraction.

"Wait!" a young man's voice cried, and everyone turned to look at a figure running pellmell towards them from just outside of where the conjured light illuminated the strange night. A huddle of men around something large shuffled after him. "Wait, there's an urgent message from the Isle of the Blessed!"

"For the gods' sakes!" Vortigern snapped, lowering his dagger and narrowing his eyes dangerously at the messenger, who held out a slip of parchment to him with shaking hands. "Surely it can wait the one minute it takes me to sacrifice this boy!"

"Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, Sire," the man stuttered out as barely more than a squeak. "But the written note is only an explanation for the true message, Sire. You see, Sire, well, um… I don't quite know how to say this, Your Majesty, but, um… there's been a ragaid."

For the first time, Vortigern's face lost its assurance. He blanched. "Say that again," he said, as though daring the younger man.

The huddle of men had arrived, and they deposited what they were carrying on the ground. It was a body dressed in the same robes all the men wore, and Merlin drew back in terrified disgust at its face – or rather, lack of one. The body's face looked as though it had been a clay model of one that someone had come along and – while the clay was still wet – smeared their hands over so that the entire thing blurred without recognition of what its feature had originally been. He couldn't even tell whether the face belonged to a man or a woman.

"Your Majesty… it's a ragaid. The High Priestesses have declared war, Sire."

Towers and child sacrifices were forgotten with this bleak statement. For how long Merlin didn't know how, but he blessed his lucky stars the High Priestesses had such excellent timing in their declarations of war.

Quite unexpectedly, Vortigern lunged forwards like a snake and stabbed the garish dagger into the chest of the man who brought him this news. It squelched when he pulled it out and the gasping man dropped to the ground, where he quickly fell still. Merlin felt bile rise in his throat. How could anybody kill someone just for delivering an unwelcome message? His chances that Vortigern would see reason and let him go looked smaller and smaller the more he saw of him.

Vortigern stared down at the note in the dead man's hands like he wanted to incinerate it from existence with his eyes. "Well, do you expect your king to stoop down himself? Somebody pick it up and read it!"

No one stepped forwards; quite wisely, in Merlin's opinion, given the fate of the man who brought it thus far.

Vivienne at last wrenched herself free – or perhaps was let go – by her guards, and picked it up, raising her eyebrows at Vortigern who muttered what Merlin assumed was a counter-silencing spell. She began reading with a condemning disdain that was easy to imagine as the voice of the war-ready priestess who wrote the note.

_"Your audacious lust for power has betrayed you. You care nothing for the balance of the world. You have ignored the ancient prohibitions and meddled in matters beyond your comprehension, desecrating the commands of the Gods and arising Their anger against you and all with you. Heed the portents, but do not count on any support from us in the coming battles, for you will receive none. From this day forth, your allies be our enemies and your foes our friends._

_Nimueh, High Priestess of the Triple Goddess, Spokeswoman of the Isle of the Blessed."_

"Typical sanctimonious gibberish," Vortigern groused. "I don't see what I've done to offend the gods – and more to the point Nimueh, that she would declare war on me."

" _Heed the portents_ ," Vivienne repeated. "She is quite clearly speaking of this eclipse."

"That's impossible." Vortigern said with the same unshakable confidence as when Will dared suggest he hadn't managed to summon this Emrys person after all. "It started when I summoned Emrys, and it can't have taken much more than an hour to carry him here from Cell-y-Dewiniaid. The only way she could have gotten this here so quickly would be if she had spies maintaining a link planted within this camp, and I've checked it repeatedly myself for such vulnerabilities."

"You must have missed the locus circle," retorted Vivienne. "Of what other portents do you think she speaks?" Then her face paled as if she had just processed something in Vortigern's words, "Emrys? Of what do you speak, when you say you summoned Emrys? Emrys has not yet been born!"

If he was trying to summon someone who hadn't been born yet, Merlin thought privately, then it was no wonder he messed up and got the wrong person.

Vivienne's head turned to Merlin, the first time she had looked at him. He wasn't entirely sure she had noticed him before now, but her eyes widened in horror as if he was the physical incarnation of all the woe and doom she had prophesied.

Vortigern puffed like a pleased tomcat, "It was difficult to find the right elements to combine in the ritual," he bragged. "The temporal fabric of the world doesn't like to be torn, but once I isolated –"

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" Vivienne shrieked. This appeared to the only coherent thought left in her, for she repeated it a good number of times before she came unstuck from the loop to conclude her shrieks with, "PUT HIM BACK!"

"I need him to build this tower. You've seen how the blood of normal fatherless boys is useless against the curse on this place. Day after day my men try to build, and day after day the walls continue to fall down around us. I need more powerful blood."

"Awful things happen to those foolish enough to break the ancient prohibitions and disturb the balance of the world, and you've just violated one of the greatest of taboos! If it was not sacrilege enough to spit in the face of Time itself, you had to steal one of the key agents of Fate before his destiny comes to fruition. No wonder the gods are angry! What were you thinking? What use is a tower if you damn us all to build it?"

"Excuse me," Merlin tried. When no one seemed to have heard, he raised his voice. "I said, EXCUSE ME!"

The strangers looked to Merlin as though they had forgotten he was still there, despite the subject of their argument being his kidnapping. He licked his lips, nervous at being these strangers' centre of attention, and tried to compose his thoughts.

Merlin could not understand half of what was going on here. Who these people were, if the gods were actually angry, what all this stuff about ancient taboos was about, or why everyone was so convinced he was this Emrys person were mysteries to him. What he did pick out from Vivienne's and Vortigern's argument was that Vortigern wanted to build a tower and was failing, so he was convinced he needed to sacrifice fatherless boys to end some curse and that Merlin – or rather, this Emrys person they thought was Merlin – would be the perfect fatherless boy to do so.

He needed to find a way of saying _were you drunk when you came up with this_? in words that weren't liable to earn him the fate of the poor messenger lying still on the ground. "Has anyone thought to check whether there's any _natural_ reason this tower can't be built? Like, say, I dunno… maybe there's a pool of water or something underneath it? And anyways, I don't see how mixing my blood in with the mortar is supposed to help keep it upright – if anything, that would just dilute the mix and make the building weaker!"

"I'm sure you have no ulterior motive for saying this." Vortigern scorned. "You can't buy your life with such cheap words."

"Does this mean you haven't?" Will snarked bravely, surprising all the adults who seemed to have forgotten him even more than Merlin. "Are you telling me you've been going around kidnapping and killing people to build some tower, and you haven't even checked the ground?"

"It doesn't matter to me whether or not the ground is full of water or an ancient curse, the problem remains that the tower cannot be built."

"Surely a man of your _prowess_ can find a way of filling in a mere pool of water in a way that does not raise the ire of the gods?" spat Vivienne. Merlin was under the impression she hadn't known Vortigern didn't bother surveying the site before embarking on murderous schemes. "You cannot deny what is right before your nose, even if you dismiss the timing of this eclipse you know as well as I that it has gone on too long to be a natural occurrence."

Vortigern opened his mouth and Vivienne cut him off as though she knew whatever it was that he planned to say. "Do not attempt to blame this on the High Priestesses; who among them has the power to change day into night? Such feats have not been seen since the days of Cornelius Sigan."

"Well then what do you _suggest_ I do?" Vortigern said. "Please enlighten me, oh high and mighty Vivienne, how you would know better than your king."

"Your mages could determine the structure of the earth in a handful of hours." Vivienne stared into Vortigern's eyes as though she was weighing his very soul. "This tower has sat unbuilt for weeks, another few hours will not be its undoing. However, if you kill this boy then the High Priestesses – even if you will not believe you have angered the gods, Nimueh made her position on this matter very clear – will assuredly be yours. You do not have the support of the people and you are already fighting two wars against enemies greater in number than you. If you do not placate the High Priestesses we are all doomed."

Vortigern was silent for a long moment in which Merlin hardly dared to breath. Whether or not the priestesses had truly declared war because of whatever taboo Vortigern had broken to kidnap Merlin, Vivienne certainly thought it was so. His stars must be very lucky, if an impending war might just save his life. At length, Vortigern must have listened to some of what Vivienne had said because he gave orders to begin digging into the ground. He and Vivienne went off to go oversee this, leaving Merlin under the guard of the nameless lackeys to wait and hope that it really was a structural problem instead of a curse that was behind Vortigern's construction woes. His life was resting on being right.

What a ridiculous thing to have to bet his life on. Merlin never thought he'd live to see the day he was glad Uther Pendradon was the real king of Camelot, but Vortigern made him look positively benevolent. At least Uther wanted to kill Merlin because he thought he was incurably evil. Vortigern wanted to kill Merlin because he couldn't be bothered to check the ground before starting construction. Thank the heavens he wasn't really a king. If he was, Merlin would hate to think what the lives of his subjects would be like.

"Well, this stinks," Will sank to the ground and started tearing out grass and ripping it apart with his fingers. Merlin joined him tentatively, remembering their fight just before their kidnapping. Aithusa lay down as well, resting her head in his lap. Will cast a wary eye on her, not as comfortable with her proximity as Merlin was beginning to hope. "I half-think I never woke up this morning. The other half of me says that not even dreams are this mad."

"Tell me about it," Merlin agreed, encouraged that Will was talking to him without yelling. Then something occurred to him. "You could probably leave, if things look bad when Vortigern comes back. I don't think he even really remembers that he kidnapped _two_ boys."

"Kidnapped by mistake and then forgotten," Will mused in an attempt at humour. "That's kind of a lame way to go." Merlin laughed even though Will had quite succinctly summed about their situation with _this stinks_.

Will continued, "But seeing as I don't really fancy wandering around in the dark trying to find some sign of civilization that doesn't think blood is an excellent construction tool and then trying to ask directions back to Ealdor when for all I know we're on the other side of the Five Kingdoms, thanks but I'll pass. Let's just hope that lady keeps hounding that nutcase about this eek-lips thing… by the way, do you know what that is?"

Merlin shrugged and offered, "I think it's whatever's wrong with the sky."

"Yeah, thanks, couldn't work that out for myself." A moment of silence stretched between them as they looked up at the ominous halo of light in the black expanse above them, Vivienne's dire warnings about angry gods ringing through both of their minds. Will broke the silence with a far too casual, "So, anything else I should know about you?"

Maybe Merlin was too hopeful to think Will had forgotten his anger in the face of being kidnapped. With deceptive calm, Will continued, "Are you secretly a long-lost prince? Have you been crossdressing all this time and I've just never noticed you're secretly a girl? Am I going to find out your name is actually Emrys, whose blood is so precious it's an essential ingredient in making indestructible buildings?"

"No!" Merlin gave a meaningful look at the robed men standing watch behind him, then said carefully, "My name is _Myrddin_ , the same as it's always been." Will thankfully didn't challenge the fake name, which Merlin thought was a good sign. "And no to the being a prince and a girl. I'm still me. I haven't hidden anything important from you."

"No, nothing important," Will's anger was resurfacing. "Let's see… you have a pet _dragon_ you can boss around like a dog, you have _magic_ –" Merlin's heart stuttered for a moment as he realized that Will had been _right there_ when Vortigern tried to burn a hole through him and declared as such "– and let's not forget that for some reason you're so important that whenever you get kidnapped an island of priestesses declares war and the gods blot out the sun!"

"It's not because I was kidnapped, it's because whatever Vortigern did to kidnap us violated some taboo." The very idea that he was the cause of the frankly alarming state of the sky was made shivers go down his spine. "The last time I was kidnapped, nothing like this happened."

This was the wrong thing to say. "Last time?" Will repeated. "Yeah, thanks for telling me about that. What are best friends for, if not to confide your problems in? Like when Dareth is being an ass again, when the food runs low, when you sprain your ankle, and, oh – _when you're kidnapped!_ "

"I was four. We hardly even knew each other then."

"And at no time in the five years since have you thought to yourself that maybe I deserve to know stuff like this?" Will didn't bother waiting for a reply; that he was only now finding out was answer enough. "You know everything about me! Excuse me for thinking the belief that we could be trusted to keep each other's secrets was mutual!"

"It's not the same!" Merlin was starting to get angry himself. "If I told someone you were the one who did you-know-what to Old Man Simmons last Beltane you'd get the belt! If you tell _anyone_ I have magic, they'll drown me in the well!"

"You really think I'd turn you in?" Will's voice wasn't raised anymore; it was barely more than a whisper, with no heat in it. He sounded hurt, not angry.

Merlin felt tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. It seemed unfair that everything was going wrong all at once; not only did Will find out about Aithusa, but they were then mistaken for someone else and kidnapped by a murderous lunatic who'd angered the gods in doing so. What were the chances of that happening at all, let alone on the same day? Now Will knew about Merlin's magic, and it wasn't the magic or dragon that was driving him away – he wasn't even watching Aithusa for sudden movement anymore. He was looking into Merlin's eyes with his hurt soul shining through, because what the implications of Merlin keeping secrets said about the foundations of their friendship was more important to him than any possibility of Merlin being the little old lady killing hell spawn Old Man Simmons stubbornly insisted he was.

Merlin looked away, staring downwards so he didn't have to look at Will as he admitted hollowly, "I didn't want to take the chance. I'm sorry."

In his lap, Aithusa opened her half-lidded eyes and sent him a wordless expression of concern for him, sensing his downcast mood through their link. He didn't answer her, just stroked her scales in a comfortingly repetitive motion. Beside him, Will was tearing up grass, ripping it out the ground and shredding it into tiny pieces in overly aggressive motions. Neither of them said anything, and there was nothing to distract Merlin from the pain, both physical from the remnants of whatever the kidnapping ritual had done to his body and emotional from all that had happened to him since he woke up that morning.

Merlin thought he might scream just to break the unbearable silence, but in the end he didn't need to; it was broken for him. Overhead, the sky boomed with the loudness of thunder despite the lack of clouds and the earth shook. Merlin and Will startled, looking tremulously at the black sky, which was silent again.

"What was that?" Will asked, voice wavering.

Something awful occurred to Merlin. " _Heed the portents_. Not portent, portent ** _s_**. As in, more than one."

Aithusa nudged his mind, asking what was wrong and what the loud noise was. Merlin tried to sooth her while he exchanged a wordless look of horror with Will, both of them thinking the same thing: what other portents were coming?

The ground shook and the sky sounded in cloudless thunder several more times while they waited. It seemed like an eternity before a nameless robed man came back from where the digging party had vanished off to. Merlin's heart beat echoed in his ears, and the tension in his body alerted both Will and Aithusa to the newcomer's arrival. The three sat together like the accused waiting for the verdict. Life or death, free or charged. Was there or was there not a pool of water.

"It is just as you foretold, oh great one," Merlin's skin crawled at the awed tone the man was using towards him. He wasn't great, and it had been a shot in the dark brought on by desperation, not any kind of omniscient knowledge he had of what lay under the grass he was sitting on. "Deep in the ground lies a cave, filled with a pool. To our amazement, within the water lies a mosaic –"

"A what?" interrupted Will. Merlin blinked up in incomprehension as well.

"A kind of picture made out of many pieces of stone." The man's eyes flashed in brief irritation as he clarified the word. He continued addressing Merlin with a touch less awe than before, "A mosaic of two dragons, one white and one red. His Majesty King Vortigern offers his apologies to the great Myrddin Emrys and sends his assurances that you will be returned unharmed to your home."

Merlin felt the tension melt off him, and a wide grin broke across his face in stark relief. Will let out a little relieved laugh beside him and Aithusa picked up on the happy mood, croaking out a little series of contented clicks.

Their celebration was cut short by the messenger who continued with, "Before the pool is filled in, the king wishes you to provide the interpretation of the mosaic."

"Um…" Merlin said, not quite sure how to put this when these people seemed convinced he was the great Emrys but there was no way around the fact that... "I have no idea. I don't get visions or god-given flashes of knowledge. Sorry."

The man frowned. "I think you are misunderstanding something; the king's wishes are not requests. Let me rephrase what I said: the king commands you to interpret the meaning of the two dragons. Until you do, the pool will not be filled in and you will not be sent back whence you came."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Vortigern's conjured light illuminated the rough walls of the cave, glistening on the still surfaced of the water. The pool filled the entire cave, leaving only a few islands of rock for the two people there to stand on. In the center of the pool rose a tall golden pillar with runes etched into it. On either side of the pillar were a multitude of coloured thin and short rods of rock rising from the unseen depths of the pool up to just below the surface of the water. To the left the rods were coloured red, to the right they were white. Both mosaics formed mirror images of the same dragon, with wings flared out behind and one forefoot raised with the claws pointing outwards, mouths gaping open in a roar.

Merlin knelt on a small rocky outcrop before the mosaic, peering desperately at the mirroring dragons as though there was a meaning laying waiting for him below the surface of the water. Vortigern tapped his fingers against his crossed arms impatiently to the side. "Well? What does it mean?"

"Why does it have to mean anything?" Merlin said, frustrated. Mouthing off to the crazy man who earlier had been planning to kill him and drain his body of its blood may not have been a good idea, but he could no longer bite back his tongue in face of the ridiculous, impossible task forced on him. "Maybe it means whoever made it liked art!"

Overhead, the ground rumbled and there came a loud boom of a thunderclap, audible even this far under the earth. The tremors continued periodically, and it might have been Merlin's imagination but he thought they were increasing in frequency. It was difficult to tell, though, as without the sun or moon in the sky it was impossible to tell how much time was passing.

Vortigern's face tightened. "Then what am I to make of the warning on the pillar?"

"Well if you can read it," for Vortigern must have been able to to know it was a warning, "then that's more than I can. Why don't _you_ interpret it!"

He looked surprised, as if nine-year-old peasants from backwater villages should know how to read archaic writing systems or at least that the boy he still addressed as Emrys should, and translated for Merlin, "It says, ' _let not the wisdom of our days fall into the recesses of Time. Look upon the dragons, the inseparable opposites who are each other, whose essence is in their colour, and remember this: each is a vanguard in the fight begun with the advent of Time. Tread forth with care, for the day of the sleeping dragons' awakening approaches.'_ Now, tell me what it means."

What an utterly useless message, Merlin thought in annoyance. If the people of old went to all the trouble of setting up a pillar with an inscription on it, they could have left a straightforward note explaining the mosaic and saved Merlin the bother!

"Why should I know! I have no idea!"

"Do not feign ignorance, it's unbecoming in one of your power and doesn't fool me for a second. You are Emrys, you must know," Vortigern insisted in an arrogant confidence that made Merlin's teeth gnash together in frustration. Why must he know? Why was it so inconceivable that Vortigern had messed up his spells and gotten Merlin instead of the unborn as of yet Emrys, and Merlin did not possess the ability to instantly know the meaning of cryptic words and the pictures that accompanied them? "You have the night to think over your choice. In the morning I will ask you once more. I highly recommend you do not refuse me again."

Vortigern tugged twice on the rope leading up from the underground cave, and of its own accord it rose, carrying him to the surface. He left behind the light for Merlin to see by, conjuring another in his hands. Merlin continued staring into the pool, which still yielded no secret answers to him.

Maybe if he went _in_ the pool something would happen? He might find something written on the part of the pillar under the surface of the water, or that the dragons made some shape when viewed at a different angle that better spelled out some deeper meaning.

It was a long shot, but Merlin was desperate.

He had only put one foot in the water when the pool began to churn as though being stirred, the surface frothing white. Merlin held his breath, scarcely daring to believe his desperate idea had been spot on, while the water around the pillar bubbled as though boiling. The water rose and rose around it, and something shot up to the surface. The pool calmed, and Merlin could see it was a gold chest, bobbing in place and miraculously not sinking despite the heavy material it was made out of.

Merlin called it towards him excitedly, lifting it out of the water with great care and setting it down on the rock beside him. When he lifted the lid, however, what lay within was not another message or anything to better explain what Merlin was expected to explain, but a teardrop shaped egg. Its hue was as red as blood, and it lay protectively cushioned by the velvet padded interior of the chest. Any other time Merlin would have been thrilled by the discovery of a dragon's egg. Now he felt only crushing disappointment that it was not a note.

He put his foot back in the water, but nothing happened. Even when he fully immersed himself and swam up and down the mosaic, looking at it and the pillar from every which angle, he found nothing of use. At last, exhausted, he dragged himself back on the rock. He crouched defeated, dripping wet and shivering, beside the gold chest. He picked it up, and tugged on the rope twice, rising to the surface.

Will and the woman who had convinced Vortigern not to kill him earlier, Vivienne, sat beside the hole in the ground leading to the cave with the pool. The sky was still in its ominous darkened state so Merlin had no accurate way of measuring time, but he thought by their bored faces they must have been sitting there for quite some time, waiting for him while he was in the cave. Will looked hopefully towards Merlin, but his face fell at Merlin's unhappy expression – neither of them were going home anytime soon.

Beside him, Vivienne sighed and glanced worriedly at the ominous sky before rising. "I have convinced Vortigern to allow you to stay the night in my tent. Your dragon awaits us there." Merlin wondered how she could tell it was night, or if she was just calling it night because she was planning to sleep. "Come, we have much to discuss."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't look directly at the sun during a solar eclipse. Just because two fictional peasant boys in the Middle Ages did does not mean it won't give you eye damage.
> 
> Whenever I read time-travel stories there's some warning of "but we can't use this again or something terrible will happen." Well, I don't deal in vagueness for why we will never again see something that would be a really convenient solution to problems that otherwise make a good story. So if you mess up time, here's what you get: a declaration of war from scandalized priestesses, a never ending eclipse, thunder and tremors, and more fun stuff to come.


	12. 0x12 - The Red and White Dragons (Part 2)

Vivienne's tent was bigger than Merlin's entire house. The cloth was made out of a material that even just looking he could tell was expensive.  Her luxurious furnishings held more trinkets and objects than Merlin thought his mother had even seen, let alone owned. Her bed was easily the biggest Merlin had ever seen, largest enough to fit three or four people and plump with an assortment of pillows and blankets and cushions. At the head lay Aithusa, spanning the width of the bed where she lay curled up on the pillows, looking perfectly content like an overgrown lady's cat.

Merlin quickly looked over to Vivienne, worried about what how she would take having her bed invaded by a horse-sized fire-breathing creature of magic. To his relief, she didn't appear bothered. If anything she looked slightly amused by her two guests' gobsmacked expressions at the sight of her luxurious quarters. "Welcome to my gilded cage."

Merlin closed his gaping jaw, a slight flush dusting his cheeks. Vivienne gestured graciously to two foldable cots set up by the large bed. "I had a servant prepare these. I apologize if you find them inadequate but they are the best I could arrange for on such short notice."

"No," Merlin said, thinking of the mat he slept on at home and trying not to look too excited by the prospect of spending the night off the ground while in the presence of this well-off woman who thought of it as makeshift. He and Will took a seat on the cots. "They're wonderful. Thank you."

Vivienne's lip curled up at the very tips. "You are most welcome, it was no trouble."

She passed Merlin a fluffy towel and both boys a blanket thicker than any he had at home. While he dried off and wrapped himself up so as not to catch a cold, she daintily took a seat at the edge of her bed, looking not the slightest bit fazed that behind her back lay a dragon. Merlin had to admire her for that.

"Now," she began briskly, "fortunately for us all, the guards who normally watch me with the eyes of a hawk fear that Myrddin Emrys will turn them into toads if they disturb us."

"Question?" Will interrupted bluntly, continuing before Vivienne had a chance to do more that look his way. "Why are you staying with this Vortigern bloke? I mean, he doesn't seem to like you and you don't seem to like him, not to mention he's completely nutters. Why not just leave?"

The slight upward curl to Vivienne's lips vanished. She looked rather like she'd swallowed something bitter. "In my dreams I leave him, and that gives me hope enough to endure each day as it comes. I stay because I have no choice in the matter. When Vortigern was ousted from the citadel there were some whom he let go, but I was not among the losses he was willing to cut to make safe his retreat."

"Why?" Will said, genuinely curious. "No offense, but he doesn't seem like the sort to enjoy getting yelled at. So why does he keep you around?"

"I possess a gift rarer than magic, one that he wishes to wield but does not possess himself. Though one may question why he bothers as I most frequently am the Cassandra to his Paris. If I were to run with torch in hand towards the wooden horse, he would call me a madwoman and have me restrained."

Merlin was getting more confused the more Vivienne spoke. It sounded like she thought she was answering the questions, but if she was he didn't think he understood the answer. All he could make out was that Vivienne was being kept here against her will because of something Vortigern wanted her to do for him; a common theme where Vortigern was concerned, apparently. A small measure of something like kinship stirred within him; she was not so different from him, despite her more stately way of speech and the fact that she was desensitized to the luxuries surrounding her.

"We have more important matters to discuss than my caged existence, however." Vivienne's gossamer eyes snapped to Merlin's. "What do you make of the mosaic and inscription?"

It was bizarre to have an adult ask his opinion on anything as though he were an equal. "I don't know," Merlin shuffled his feet awkwardly, wishing he could say something that would live up to the great expectations these people were piling on his shoulders. "That the ancient people liked being pointlessly mysterious?"

Will snorted beside him. "Why, what's this moz-ack –"

"Mosaic," Vivienne corrected.

"– this thing look like?"

And so Merlin told him about the two mirrored dragons and the cryptic inscription, showing both Vivienne and Will the gold box with its priceless treasure that was unfortunately not very useful to his present dilemma. Aithusa stirred for the first time, shaking the whole bed when she shifted forwards to better see the unhatched member of her kin lying within. Merlin pushed the box towards her, and she gripped it was her forepaw, bringing it closer to press against her and wrapping her wings around it protectively.

"I wonder if the dragon inside is red." When he was given two questioning looks, Merlin explained, "Aithusa's egg was white, the same colour as her scales. But this egg is red, so I was wondering if that was also the colour of this dragon's scales."

"You think the egg has something to do with this all?" Will asked. Helping Merlin solve the riddle that would get them home was apparently deemed more important than any issues he most likely still had about the lies and secret-keeping. "It does seem like an awfully big coincidence that now there's a white and red dragon, same as in the picture."

" _The day of the sleeping dragons' awakening approaches_ ," Merlin repeated, rolling the words around and trying to make sense of them. "The sleeping part could mean how it's not aware of the world while it's in the egg. So the awakening is when the dragons are born. It which case its already half come true."

It was perhaps the easiest part of the inscription to make sense of. Neither Will nor Vivienne contested his reasoning.

" _The inseparable opposites who are each other_ ," Merlin mused, trying to pick apart the inscription piece by piece.

The image of the stone dragons came to mind with those words. The dragons were mirror images, identical except for the direction they faced and their colours. _Opposites who are each other,_ the same design facing opposite directions. Opposite but the same, he racked his brain in frustration. What did it mean to be the opposite but the same? And where did _inseparable_ come into play? Both the image of the dragons and the real dragons atop Vivienne's bed were separate from one another. The gold pillar lay between the images, and the gold box lay between Aithusa and her unhatched distant cousin. Even ignoring that, Aithusa had lived for five years before meeting this egg. They were hardly inseparable.

" _Whose essence is in their colour_ ," Vivienne mused, looking over her shoulder at Aithusa and the egg.

That obviously meant red and white. But what did it _mean_? What was the significance of being a white dragon as opposed to a red dragon? Merlin thought up things he associated with each colour: snow, clouds, cold, purity, innocence for white and Camelot, blood, hot, anger, passion for red. Perhaps the adjectives associated with the colours were meant to describe the dragons' personalities?

But what truly bothered him was the next bit, " _Each is a vanguard in the fight begun with the advent of Time._ "

That sounded very ominous. Combined with the way the stone dragons had been facing each other roaring with forepaws raised threateningly, it sounded like Aithusa and the egg were meant to fight each other as some part of a battle that had been ongoing since the dawn of the world. He looked over to where Aithusa lay curled protectively around the egg, and thought that if that were true it would be a fate too cruel for words that the two last dragons in the world were destined to be enemies.

"The fight begun _with_ the advent of Time," Vivienne mused. "It's an interesting choice, _with_. Not _at_ , or _alongside_ , or _since_ , or _during_. _With_."

"Does it really matter?" Merlin couldn't help but wonder. It seemed such a tiny little word to get hung up on.

"It may. _With_ suggests correlation whereas the alternatives do not. If the selection of _with_ was done deliberately, then it may be saying more than that this fight is ancient. It may be saying that this fight was _caused_ by the birth of time."

"A fight caused by time itself." That was so unhelpful. He tried to think of what it might mean, but it was like fishing around in the dark. "So then, Aithusa and the red dragon are inseparable for some reason, opposite but the same, their colours say something deep about them, and they're at the head of a fight that began with and might have been caused by the beginning of time."

"It doesn't really seem like the sort of answer Vortigern'll think is good enough," Will groused, echoing Merlin's gloomy thoughts. They had all the pieces of the puzzle, but he didn't know how to fit them together to make a whole. There had to be a deeper meaning; someone had gone to a lot of trouble and expense to hide away a dragon's egg and leave that blasted inscription on a pillar made of _gold_ of all things.

But no matter how long they threw around ideas and suggestions, they couldn't find anything that incorporated all the pieces of the puzzle. At length, Vivienne suggested as though probing to see how Merlin would take her words, "I find that sometimes, it is best to tell Vortigern not necessarily what is, but what he _wants_ to hear is."

"You mean, just make something up?" It would be a good idea, if Merlin wasn't such a rubbish liar.

Vivienne leaned forwards, and Merlin could almost see the wheels in her head turning and gaining momentum. "What Vortigern _wants_ to hear you say," she pressed, "is that he will be victorious in the wars he is raging. If you bend the words of the pillar and the symbolism of the dragons to tell him such, he will be satisfied. You could tell him that one dragon represents him, and the other his enemies."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Merlin argued. "Nothing about the dragons or the pillars has anything to do with him. And what about the real meaning? If Aithusa and the red dragon are destined to fight in some war, I want to know what this war is! And what will he do to the dragon that I tell him symbolizes his enemies?"

Vivienne didn't answer, and Merlin's stomach sank. Vortigern had been willing to violate a taboo to kidnap and kill Merlin in order to build a tower, it was clear what he would do to the dragon Merlin told him was meant to fight at the vanguard of his enemies.

"No," Merlin said, stomach turning. He couldn't consign either Aithusa or the unhatched red dragon to death merely in order to return home. "We have to find another way."

"What if we hide the egg?" Will suggested, startling both Merlin and Vivienne. He had been mostly silent during their talks, not having seen the mosaic himself he had less input on what it might mean. He had only thrown out a couple of suggestions here and there, as he was doing now. Will continued on, "The only people who know this egg exists are the three of us. Why tell anyone else? Mer… Myrddin can make up something about how the white dragon is him and will be victorious, and for all he knows the red dragon is flying around with his enemies already. Why does he ever have to know it was sitting right under his very nose?"

"That could work," Merlin said slowly. Aithusa had been perfectly fine at the top of a tower for hundreds of years, surely the red egg would be fine as well hidden away. Thoughts of Borden came to mind, but Merlin quashed them: he wasn't going to make a key, so no one would know where he hid the egg. Merlin laughed, recalling Borden's ravings and thinking they fit the gold chest perfectly. "It'll be like a hidden treasure."

Vivienne's eyes widened at these words, and her head swiveled towards the gold chest, staring at it as if seeing it anew. She backed off her bed, a look of comprehension on her face as some realization only she was privy to dawned on her. Without warning, she turned on her heel and half-ran out her tent.

"Um, bye?" Merlin called at the tent flap swishing back into place behind her. "We'll just sit here and try and work things out on our own then, don't mind us!"

"What was that about?" Will asked, baffled. "What'd she go running off for?"

Merlin shrugged. "No idea."

Will snorted. "You make a terrible all-knowing sorcerer." With the forbidden word uttered between them things turned awkward fast. Both of them averted their eyes, Merlin pretended to adjust his blankets and Will picked a loose thread on his shirt.

When his blankets were snugly wrapped around him and he had no other convenient distraction to pretend to be absorbed by, Merlin swallowed, "I meant it, when I said I was sorry. I should have told you... and I understand if you don't want to be my friend anymore."

Suddenly a pillow smacked into his head, and instinctively Merlin looked up. Will was scowling at him. "Dammit, Merlin, if you weren't my friend don't you think I would have taken my chances and hightailed it out of here around when that nutter started going on about building towers out of blood? You're not getting rid of me that easily!"

"But you're still mad at me." After thinking Will was cooling down so many times only to be proved wrong, Merlin was certain he was not yet off the hook.

"That doesn't mean I want to lose my best friend," Will actually rolled his eyes. "And stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"All big and doe-eyed! I've seen puppies that are easier to stay mad at!" Will snatched back his pillow and huffed, going back to picking a thread and devoting unnecessary amounts of concentration to it. A light flush coloured his cheeks when he mumbled out, "Fine, if you can do it so can I… I'm sorry. For yelling at you, I mean. And, uh, um… yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. And of course we're still friends. But seriously, if you ever keep such massive secrets from me again I'll smack you until you don't know which way is up anymore."

It was perhaps the most awkward apology Merlin had ever heard, but that only made it all the more heartwarming - even with the still slightly miffed ending. Both of them smiled and laughed a little awkwardly in relief that they were definitely friends again, but the uncomfortable silence was difficult to break. Even if Will was willing to forgive him for the lies, they still sat there between them needing addressing.

"Sooo…" Will said, turning to look at Aithusa. "Are you going to introduce me to your dragon? Also, can it take me flying? Because that would be _amazing_."

"Will," Merlin said, an irrepressible smile breaking across his face at the peace offering, "meet Aithusa. Aithusa, this is my friend Will."

Aithusa had lifted her head from where she was nuzzling the red egg and inclined her head to Will, who looked taken aback. Slyly, Merlin said, "And I think you'd be better off asking _her_ if you can go for a ride. She can understand human speech."

At Will's distinctly horrified expression – doubtlessly recalling the way he had called Aithusa 'it' and a 'pet' in front of her – Merlin doubled over laughing, clutching his stomach as tears poured down his face. He felt Aithusa nudge his mind, inquiring about why he was laughing. Aithusa's concept of humour wasn't very well-developed yet, so he just told her it was because he was happy. Will grabbed a pillow and whacked Merlin across the head, calling him names for not telling him that sooner.

After the pillow fight, Will and Merlin talked on as he answered all Will's questions about Aithusa and Merlin's magic, since they needed addressing and they couldn't really plan anything until Vivienne came back from wherever she'd gone to. After all, if they were going to try to pass Aithusa off as a symbol of Vortigern's victory they needed to know more about him than that he was a lunatic who had no qualms about killing people, and neither of them even knew who the enemies the red dragon was supposed to represent were. They couldn't even hide the egg as they knew nothing about their surroundings, unless they wanted to dig a hole in the ground of Vivienne's tent and bury it.

Outside the periodic thunderclaps went on, and several things in Vivienne's tent had fallen off shelves and broken by the shaking of the earth. Inside the tent, with the light of a candle, it was easy to pretend that the darkness was merely nighttime. But Merlin and Will were reminded all was not – in fact – well when from the outside they could hear people yelling. They broke off their conversation and crept towards the tent flap, hesitating before drawing it back. With the way Merlin's day was going, it would probably be cow-sized giant locusts that ate human flesh causing the commotion. Steeling himself for mayhem and madness, Merlin threw back the flap of the tent and leaped out.

He was reminded of his mother's chiding words to look before leaping when he crashing into the legs of a robed man standing just outside the tent, gawking with his head craned upwards to the sky. The man stumbled forwards, glancing down at the child who crashed into him in obvious confusion, then shook his head as though berating himself and looking up again. His young face was creased in many worry lines as he frowned at the sky as though trying to solve a great mystery. Merlin muttered an apology and took a step back sheepishly.  Curious to know what the man was looking at, Merlin looked up.

Across the black sky were numerous streaks, disappearing towards the horizon in of trails of white. Merlin's breath caught at the sight, his first thought being how beautiful they were, before he remembered that this wasn't a normal nighttime sky. If no normal stars were visible, then it would make sense that shooting stars also should not be. Even though if Vivienne was here she'd probably proclaim them as further proof of the gods' anger, Merlin couldn't help but admire them.

One flew past the halo of light, flaring into a large flaming orange funnel-shaped ball before it disappeared, and he commented to no one in particular. "That one looked like a dragon."

The comment earned Merlin a disbelieving look from the robed man beside him, "How so?"

"Well, the head of a dragon," he said with a grin. "When it flies by spouting fire, of course."

The man laughed in surprise, "Of course," he repeated solemnly, a grin tugging at the corners of his lips not being repressed very well. "You see a lot of dragons then, lad?"

Merlin's brow creased. "You mean aside from the white one?"

"A white dragon eh?" the man said indulgently, humouring him the way adults did when they thought children's imaginations were running away with them. "Must have been quite a sight."

Merlin didn't immediately respond; he didn't know anything about communication between Vortigern's followers, but he imagined even those not there to personally witness the fiasco of Merlin's aborted blood sacrifice would at least have been informed of the captive "Myrddin Emrys" and his dragon. Come to think of it, this man was being much friendlier to him than anyone he'd yet spoken to here, even more so than the helpful but slightly cold Vivienne.

"Who are you?" he asked. He was wearing the clothes of Vortigern's men, but his lack of knowledge of the dragon aside, his warmth was rather incongruous with all the other wordless men who wore the uniform. Merlin just couldn't picture this man summoning children to be sacrificed.

The man's face lost its easy nature, and he drew back a step. "No one of any importance."

Merlin was about to press further when his eye was drawn to behind the man, where Vivienne stood looking slightly out of breath and shocked. Her eyes were fixed on the hooded man, and she rushed forwards grabbing both the man and Merlin, drawing them into her tent. She peered out the flap in both directions frantically, then closed it with a relieved,

"No one saw." Turning, Vivienne gracefully sank into a deep curtsy, shocking Merlin and Will who exchanged incredulous looks. "Your Majesty," she said deferentially.

The friendly robed man held up a hand, "Please, Vivienne, there is no need. I've told you before; Camelot won't crumble if you don't stand on formality with me. You can call me Aurelius."

Merlin was lost. He thought that these people were all under the impression that Vortigern was king of Camelot. Now this Aurelius man was actually the king? Their delusional politics were impossible to follow.

Vivienne straightened. "Then Your Majesty must forgive me for speaking freely," a slightly exasperated note entered her tone, "when I say that you should not take such great risks. The fate of Camelot rests on your shoulders; you should not jeopardize it so frequently with ill-advised self-appointed reconnaissance missions. One day you may be caught, and with your death -"

"- my younger brother will take over to lead in my place." Aurelius said as though this was an argument he was used to having. "I'm not irreplaceable; he'll finish the retaking of our land and make a fine king if it comes to that. More importantly, what in the world is going on with the sky? What new devilry is Vortigern cooking up to unleash on us?"

Vivienne's delicate fingers pressed against her brow as though she had a headache brewing. "None, he has angered the gods, the heretical fool." Gesturing at Merlin, she continued, "Do not worry; it will be made right soon, once Vortigern returns Myrddin Emrys to where he belongs."

Aurelius' eyebrows rose and Merlin knew he was wondering why the whereabouts of one boy was of such concern to the gods. Vivienne explained, "Emrys is a key agent of Fate whose destiny is deeply entrenched in the fabric of the world. Not only that, but to bring him here Vortigern committed a sacrilege too vile for words."

If anything this answer seemed to confuse and intrigue Aurelius further, but Vivienne only said, "So as you can see, there is no dark sorcery for you to thwart. I apologize if the portents made you assume wrongly, but there is nothing for you to investigate here. Vortigern is most assuredly too distracted at the moment to be plotting against you and your brother."

"For once," Aurelius muttered sarcastically.

"Before you go," Vivienne said, even though Aurelius had uttered no word nor made any movement to indicate he planned on leaving, "The gods are not the only ones angered by Vortigern's actions. If you are planning to make overtures to the Isle of the Blessed requesting aid in the coming battles, now is the opportune moment."

"As always, my lady, you are very helpful. I'll discuss it with my brother, but we always value your insight in these matters." Aurelius seemed to take Vivienne's unsubtle hint, for he was turning towards the tent flap when he suddenly jolted and spun around. His jaw dropped, "There really is a dragon!"

Merlin glanced over to where Aithusa still lay curled up on the bed, and it occurred to him what a bizarre sight it must seem. The man's hand darted under the robes, and he pulled out a sword.

"No!" Merlin exclaimed. "No, she's a friend!" Aurelius looked over at him, hesitating, and Merlin moved to block her from him. She nudged him with her mind, asking who the newcomer was and what he was holding. When he didn't answer her, she nudged his shoulder with her head. The proximity of dragon and child was seemed to further alarm Aurelius, and Merlin pleaded, "She'd never hurt anyone!"

Aithusa croaked out a questioning trill, and Merlin reached out to stroke her head. She leaned into the touch, and Aurelius watched as though he was questioning whether or not he'd started hallucinating. He sheathed his sword, hiding it in the billows of his robes. He looked between Aithusa and Merlin, and said a little faintly, "I think I've finally figured out what to put on the banners. Not even the usual naysayers can claim that the sight of dragons doesn't inspire the proper amount of fear."

He flashed very white teeth when he laughed a little incredulously, and said to Merlin, "I suppose this is farewell for us then, Myrddin Emrys, key agent of Fate. It's been a pleasure. May the gods continue watching over you – as they clearly already are – and may all the dragons you meet be friends. And if not, be sure to watch out for the heads."

Then Aurelius lifted the tent flap, looking both ways before stepping out into the dark.

Will, who had been silent during the whole exchange, finally burst out in the up-and-down intonation of the truly perplexed, "Who was that?"

"The rightful king of Camelot," Vivienne's eyes gleamed as though she could see something wonderful which was invisible to Merlin. "Who is ushering in a new era that will soon make Vortigern's reign of terror no more than a painful memory of a past long gone."

"Now, I believe we have a treasure to hide." At this abrupt change in topic from Vivienne, Merlin felt sheepish. He had almost forgotten about that.

When Merlin took the gold box off the bed, Aithusa straightened and followed after him, like an overgrown dog whose master had food in his hands. Vivienne said nothing about where they were going or why she had run out so suddenly, not that it would have mattered as Merlin knew nothing about the surrounding area. They crept through the dark without any light to guide them, Merlin and Will holding onto the sleeves of Vivienne's nightgown while she ghosted through the dark with a sense of purpose to her steps. They had been walking so long Merlin was beginning to question the wisdom of following her – even if she was the most sensible out of Vortigern's people, she was still under the mad impression that either Vortigern or Aurelius was the king of Camelot so she couldn't be entirely sane – when she stopped all of a sudden, and said simply,

"We are here."

Merlin looked around in the pitch blackness, and wondered where here was supposed to be and how Vivienne had found it. Vivienne placed a hand on his back, nudging him forwards. Feeling rather foolish, Merlin stumbled forwards a few steps, arms out in front of him to keep from walking into something.

He was about to ask what he was supposed to be doing, when all of a sudden a bell rang, high and clear, and there was a rumbling sound from the ground. Suddenly there was light, from fires in torch brackets illuminating a tunnel in a hill in front of him. Looking down, Merlin saw his foot was on the threshold of the tunnel. He glanced over his shoulder to Vivienne, who waved him onwards encouragingly. Merlin stepped inside, the others following behind him.

As soon as they were all in, a rumble came from behind them and – to Merlin's alarm – an earthen wall now covered the entrance way. He took a step forwards, but Vivienne grabbed him by the shoulder, shaking her head.

"Do not worry, the door will allow us to pass once more on our way out. It is there – I believe – to hide this place so that any who look will see nothing but hillside, save for the one for which it was built." There could be no doubt from the meaningful look she gave him that she believed Merlin to be that one.

Merlin licked his dry lips, and turned back to face the long hallways of the tunnel, walking forwards to wherever it led. "So then if it's so well hidden, how did you find it?"

"Every night since I came to Snowdonia I have had the same dream," she said as though beginning a story. Merlin didn't see what that had to do with anything, but listened all the same. "There is a young man walking along the hillsides. He is golden-haired and blue-eyed, and he is searching for something. As he walks, a great rumbling comes from one of the hills and from somewhere a bell rings. Part of the hill sinks away, and a passage way opens into the hill. The man enters, following the passage until he comes to a great open space with a lone pillar in the center. Atop the pillar lies a golden chest, identical to the one you are carrying as I speak."

Shivers ran down Merlin's spine, and though he was tempted to think this merely an imagining of Vivienne's not-entirely-sane mind he couldn't think of another explanation for how she could have found a hidden entrance in the pitch dark of the eclipse. At length they came to a great open space with a lone pillar in the center, and Merlin had to give her story some amount of credence, even if she could have just come here before. He placed the chest on the center pillar, hoping the entrance was as well concealed as she said it was.

He turned to go, and then stopped when he saw only Vivienne and Will waiting in the passageway. He looked around for Aithusa and saw that she had somehow slipped by him. She was over by the pillar, rubbing her head against the gold box, and then she settled down on the ground beside it as though planning to go to sleep.

Wordlessly, Merlin called her through their mental link, telling her they were leaving and she had to come. In answer, she shocked him with a definite and clear, _« No. »_

He'd never before heard her speak in true words, pictures and intentions and emotions were the norm for her. Up until this point, he hadn't been sure she knew how to produce language, even if she could understand it.

 _« You have to come, we're leaving. »_ He tried again, not certain she'd understood the first time.

In answer, an image came into his mind that was dyed in the extended rainbow of colours that Aithusa saw the world through, including colours Merlin had no name for. In Aithusa's colouring, he saw the backs of himself and two humanoid figures walking away down the passage way, while a little white dragon lay in the open space beside the pillar. The white dragon lifted the red egg from the box and curled up around it, eyes closing in contented, peaceful slumber.

 _« You want to stay? »_ He asked, certain he had not understood what she just showed him. Why would she want to stay behind, shut in underground by the door that if Vivienne was to be believed only opened for Merlin and the mysterious golden-haired man? When he received an affirmation, he could only ask, _« Why? »_

Another image formed in his mind, beginning where the other left off. In this one the white dragon was still sleeping underground with the red egg, but she was much bigger. A tall figure came down the hallway, and Merlin saw that it was himself enlarged by ridiculously long legs – Aithusa didn't seem to understand how humans changed as they grew other than that they became bigger. The long-legged Merlin picked up the egg, which cracked open to reveal a miniature red-coloured Aithusa inside. The two dragons followed Merlin out the tunnel, blinking into the sunlight, where crowds of humans greeted them happily with blurred faces.

Confused, Merlin said, _« That won't happen. People won't come to accept dragons just because you hide here for a long time. »_

This time Merlin saw the long-legged Merlin speaking with the people with blurred faces, over the grave of an old man that even though was nondescript in his blurry features he knew as Uther Pendragon, the bane of Aithusa's existence since before her birth. The people radiated disbelief at first, but the long-legged Merlin continued speaking to them, and slowly they changed until they radiated more favourable feelings.

He pondered what she had "told" him, intimidated by her belief in his ability to turn the minds of the populace. It was true that Uther Pendragon wasn't immortal; eventually, he would die. But would that truly solve anything? Merlin and Aithusa didn't even live where his laws held power and they still were under the shadow of his regime. One man could not be solely responsible for such wide spread hate. Would the absence of the head make the rest of the body any better disposed towards magic? And even if that were true, how was Merlin supposed to convince the world?

But just as once magic had been free maybe, one day, it would be again. It was something Merlin believed, not because he had any real reason to but because it was something he _had_ to believe to keep going. His future could not solely be one of hiding and fear; at some point it had to get better because he didn't know how he could live on unless he believed it would. He couldn't see how he was supposed to accomplish what Aithusa wanted him to, but he was hardly all-knowing. Perhaps with time things would change and it would be easier. Even if just one country supported magical beings – and not in the way that Cenred 'supported' them – then they could go live there and be free together. No more hiding. No more secrets and lies.

Nonetheless, he didn't see why Aithusa felt she had to stay here for years and years until it happened. He tried to convince her again, _« This is too far away from where I live. I can't come visit you here; you'd be all alone. You don't want that. »_

The next image was of Aithusa in the mouth of the confines of the Tunnels outside Ealdor. The sun rose and fell, day and night passed and the leaves on the trees sprouted, flowered, and fell as the seasons went by. He saw himself coming as a brief shining light in an otherwise bleak existence of watching the world change while not a part of it. He was there and gone in an instant, a blip in the long passage of time while Aithusa waited pining in loneliness, all on her own.

The scene shifted, so that it was Aithusa, in the treasure room curled around the egg, dreaming in undisturbed peace. She wasn't merely sleeping; she was hibernating, completely unaware of the world around her, dreaming of the day Merlin would return and set her free. The egg's consciousness dreamed beside her, drowsily communicating with her sleeping mind in the dragon way. The companionship she desperately longed for which Merlin couldn't provide her with. They waited for him together.

Merlin felt a lump in his throat. He knew Aithusa's life must be lonely, but he tried not to think about it because there was nothing he could do for her. She had long outgrown the size when she could be kept in the house and hidden under a pile of laundry with strict orders not to move at every knock on the door. The Tunnels were the only place she could hide safely, anywhere nearer Merlin had too much risk of discovery for someone of Aithusa's size. He tried to get away to visit her as much as he could without raising the other villagers' suspicions, but there was no denying her solitude.

Still, he tried to convince her. _« You'll most likely be trapped inside. Nowhere to get out to stretch your wings. »_

She repeated the image of her sleeping again, stressing that she would be unaware of anything going on while she was here.

Then he was living her memories. A puff of smoke exited her mouth, but it was not warm but cold. She was in the dark, narrow, cold confines of the Tunnels outside Ealdor. She was cold and hungry and lonely, wishing night would come so she could stretch her wings. When at last the night came she only ventured into the forest on foot, not daring to take to the skies with the full moon shining down on her glistening white scales. Only on the nights of the new moon, when it was darkest, could she soar through the sky as she wished to. Her wings thrummed to fly, but always she must wait for one night a month. The fear of discovery weighed even more heavily over Aithusa's life than Merlin's, and he was reminded of a story his mother would tell him about how he used to hide in the laundry basket from visitors when he was small. That was reality for Aithusa; she could never slip and let herself be seen, or she would be hunted down and killed.

_« Why can't you just hibernate in the Tunnels, if you want to sleep until magic roams free? »_

Sounds of child voices echoed happily from the Tunnels outside Ealdor, children exploring the labyrinth of caves. Always she had to be on guard, keeping in mind several exits so that if they came near her she could evade them without being seen. She could never allow herself to sleep deeply; she always had to be ready to leap up at the smallest of noises, in case she had to make an escape.

Merlin was reminded again of the way Will had followed him so easily. If it had been anyone else, Aithusa would have been in a lot of trouble. Catrin's children he might have been able to convince to keep it secret by using their terror of him to his advantage, but if Dareth or one of the other boys had followed him they surely would have run screaming back to the village to fetch an adult. And that was only assuming it would be a child following him; Old Man Simmons was just as likely a bet, as obsessed as he was with proving to the other adults that he wasn't crazy by catching Merlin in some act of devilry. Hadn't he and his mother just decided he couldn't visit Aithusa for a while for both their safety? Thinking purely from a safety perspective, it would be much safer for Aithusa here than outside Ealdor where Merlin might inadvertently lead the villagers to her.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to accept it. Safer or not, Aithusa was a creature of the sky and open spaces. Dragons were not meant to be shut underground, and even if Aithusa could not fly as often as she liked she could at least venture outside at night. The thought of her locked up in a hill for years was wrong, like the thought of a bird in a cage. « _Once the door shuts, you'll be trapped. You won't be able to change your mind. Is it really worth it? »_

A whooshing feeling of being airborne, daylight streaming down on the ground that was speeding past her far below in a blur of highlighted green filled him. Through her eyes he saw the tips of white wings beating rhythmically at the edges of her vision, and the view shifted so she was looking to the side rather than below. In the air keeping pace beside her was a smaller red Aithusa, who darted playfully around her in a loop. Both dragons dove downwards, feeling the air rush past their faces, then broke off right before the treeline, skimming the tips as they flew past them, weaving around each other as they flew. Below them, happy humans clapped.

She would not be persuaded. The future she dreamed of was too enticing, especially considering the bleakness of her current existence. Still, he had one final argument against her decision, the most painful question of them all. _« What if that day never comes? »_

Merlin might dream of the day magic was free, but realistically the world was a much crueler place. Dreams didn't always come true; Aithusa may never be able to fly through the daylight sky.

Aithusa did not use words in her answer, nor images, just a sense of what she meant. _Then the two of us will sleep forever_. She considered that to be a better option than continuing on with her life as it was.

Tears blurred against his eyes, and he ran forwards to wrap his arms around her. He never thought he would have to say goodbye to Aithusa. She was family as much as his mother, always waiting for him to talk to when he most needed it, a friend for almost as long as he could remember. But – despite Will's words – she was not his pet, but a member of his kin. If she wanted to stay behind so badly, then he would not force her to leave, even though he knew he could.

She made a low rumbling noise in her throat, the dragon equivalent of distress, and nuzzled her head against him one last time. After staying like that for a moment, she backed away, turning her head towards the gold box.

Another memory entered his mind. It was dark and though her limbs were squeezed against the hard shell all around her she was comfortable and warm. She was dreaming of a world she had never seen but knew of anyways, woken from her slumber by a voice calling out a word she instantly knew meant her.

She sent a wave of intense desire to Merlin, who understood what she could not express in words. She wanted him to give her companion a name, but not to call it out of its egg yet. She wanted a word to refer to it with, but also wanted the first breaths it took to be breathed in freedom, the way hers had not been though she had been too young to know so at the time.

Merlin closed his eyes and sensed the dragon sleeping within the egg in the same way he had once sensed Aithusa. He felt the red dragon's heartbeat, and dreamed its instinctive knowledge of the world it had never seen with it, feeling deep into its personality until he knew who it was. And when he did he told Aithusa, careful to exclude the red dragon from his thoughts lest it hear the name and hatch before its time,

_« Cadwaladr. »_

Aithusa repeated the name in her mind, the second word he had ever heard her say, attaching it to the red egg. She looked to the egg one last time, then curled up at the bottom of the pillar, shutting her eyes as she prepared to hibernate.

Merlin took a step back, taking one last look to keep in his mind, and vowed to himself that this would not be the last time he saw Aithusa. He would come back for her, someday, just as she believed he would, and together they would go somewhere where they could live freely as she dreamed.

Then he turned resolutely. He knew if he looked back he wouldn't be able to leave, so though the temptation was nearly overpowering he forced himself to resist. Vivienne and Will were looking to him for explanation, and he told them in as few words as possible of Aithusa's decision. Vivienne looked pensive, as though she was turning over a great matter in her mind, and at last said,

"As long as she sleeps until the day you return for her, I believe the balance of nature will not be affected by her presence in this time." Merlin wasn't sure he knew exactly what she meant, but it sounded as if she had accepted Aithusa's decision.

The walk back down the long tunnel was filled with speculation about what Merlin could say to try and pass off the dragons as Vortigern and one of his enemies, who according to Vivienne were Aurelius and more recently the Saxons.

Merlin turned over the words of the inscription, trying to think of how to fit them to Aithusa but only able to think of how much he would miss her. It didn't feel real yet, that there would be no more long visits to the Tunnels once he got back home, no more Aithusa waiting there to listen to him, understanding the problems he faced better than even his mother could. Merlin said nothing, letting Will and Vivienne's ideas wash over his head as he tried to will away the closing of his throat and the stinging in his eyes.

He thought of all Aithusa had shared with him about her life and her dreams, and wished he could have been there for her more the way she was there for him. He told himself he would be, in the distant someday when they were both free.

Just then Vivienne was reiterating the part of the inscription about being the vanguard of a fight, trying to bend it to fit Vortigern's war against the Saxon. The words struck Merlin in a way they hadn't before.

He thought of Aithusa's life in the past and her dreams for the future. He thought of Vortigern's and Aurelius' claim to the kingship of Camelot, of Vivienne's words about a new era replacing the old. He thought of the inscription that had so stumped him before, replaying the original words in his head and what individual pieces of meaning they had dissected. And most of all, Vivienne's fixation on the word _with_ and her theory about the fight being related to time.

And then he knew how they all fit together. "I know the meaning of the inscription." Vivienne and Will turned to him in shock. "I don't have to make up anything to tell him, I know what it means."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Vortigern wasn't sleeping, as Merlin feared he might be. He wasn't sure what time it was, but since Vortigern had referred to it as _night_ Merlin had been concerned when they announced themselves at the flap of Vortigern's tent they would be turned away because he was asleep.

Instead, Vortigern was giving orders to a group of men. Something about meteorites and setting up barriers that Merlin couldn't quite understand because he didn't know what meteorites were. In any case, when "Myrddin Emrys" was announced Vortigern quickly concluded his audience and dismissed his men, looking to Merlin in expectation.

Now that Merlin was standing there, he felt uneasy. What if he had misinterpreted everything? Vivienne put a hand on his shoulder as though she could sense his worries, and he only hoped if he was wrong she would be able to smooth everything over so that Vortigern didn't go nuts and do to him what he did to that poor messenger.

Licking his lips, Merlin forced confidence he did not feel into his voice as he declared, "The meaning of the two dragons is the struggle between the old and the new. White represents being untouched by the world, like fresh fallen snow. The white dragon is the new. Red, on the other hand, has been tempered by its worldly experiences. It's seen things that are good and things that are bad, so it's the colour of fire and blood, which can be both. The red dragon is the old. As much as they're opposites, they're the same too because what's new now will become old and what's old now used to be new. In this way, they're inseparable."

Merlin was tense as Vortigern silently turned over his conclusions, his face looking as though he was probing Merlin's answer for weaknesses. Against the top of his tent came the pattering of rain, at first light but quickly gaining force until it must be coming down as a torrent, ludicrously loud in contrast to the stillness within the tent. Finally, Vortigern nodded as though in concession to what Merlin said, and then said,

"But what does it mean for me? Am I the old, or the new?"

Merlin had to bite back his tongue to avoid saying something he would regret when it angered Vortigern into chopping his head off. It was so presumptuous of the mad self-proclaimed king to assume that the ancient message left centuries ago was specifically for _him_ when there was nothing to suggest it, yet given what Merlin had seen of him it didn't surprise him.

Thinking quickly, feeling drained by everything and just wanting to get this over with, Merlin remembered Vivienne's advice and made up, "You are the old, and the Saxons are the new. The red dragon will be victorious."

Vortigern looked pleased and asked no more questions, which was a good thing because Merlin didn't know how he could justify one dragon defeating another when nothing spoke of which would win. He didn't think that there was a true end to the conflict; it was old versus new, they had been in conflict since the dawn of time when the concept of age first begun. Whether Vortigern defeated the Saxons or not, that would just be one victory in a war that would last as long as time itself. It meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, and was unlikely to be on the minds of the people who undertook the erecting of the gold pillar and the design of the mosaics.

Merlin was still bitter towards those people. He didn't see why they couldn't have just written the true meaning on the pillar and saved him the effort of having to find it.

After Vortigern ordered some of his robed followers to go fill in the pool, Vivienne said tightly, "Emrys has done as you asked. Now you must send him home."

Vortigern looked at her as though she was a fly constantly buzzing in his ear. "I _must_ , must I? May I remind you I am the king? There is nothing I _must_ do."

Merlin froze, wondering why he felt so shocked by this coming from a man like Vortigern, and anger simmered in his veins even as he remained locked in place. "You said you'd send me home once I told you the meaning."

"The High Priestesses must be appeased," Vivienne insisted, appealing to Vortigern's common sense and apparently believing that having promised something was not enough incentive to motivate him to uphold said promise. "You cannot afford to wage another war."

"The priestesses will not dare attack me when I have the great Emrys under my thumb," Vortigern eyed Merlin with fervour, as though in solving a riddle he had demonstrated the powers of the great Emrys Vortigern had intended to summon. "Why should I give up the greatest sorcerer of the age to appease those superstitious holier-than-thou gasbags?"

"The portents –"

"Coincidences," he dismissed. "Have you ever seen an eclipse before? Who's to say they can't last hours? Earthquakes are hardly unique, they happen all the time. And this meteor shower is unfortunate –a number of tents on fire, seven men grievously injured, and one dead – but hardly supernatural. These are all things that occur naturally."

Merlin broke out, cutting off whatever argument Vivienne was about to make, "I am not under your thumb!" He was sick of standing by and letting these people argue his fate, of counting on Vivienne to come up with reasons for why Vortigern should send Merlin back home. "You may as well send me back, because I will never, _ever_ serve you! I'd _rather_ you drain me of my blood and mix it with mortar than have to jump when you say jump and help you in any way with your selfish, cruel deeds!"

Vortigern stood, face rapidly going purple with anger at the brazenness of the peasant boy before him. Merlin stood his ground, rooting himself to the spot. Vortigern might be able to block his magic, he might be able to run Merlin through with that tacky dagger from earlier, but he couldn't make Merlin fall to his knees pleading for his life. He meant every word he said; if Vortigern wasn't going to send him home, he'd rather die than stay as his captive pet Emrys.

Before he could take more than a step forward, the sound of someone scrambling through the tent flap came from behind them. The voice of the spokesman for the group Vortigern dispatched to fill in the pool called out, "Your Majesty! I bring you terrible news!"

"What?" Vortigern snapped, jerking his gaze away from Merlin and towards the messenger.

Merlin was filled with foreboding as he remembered the fate of the last messenger who brought unwelcome news, but Vortigern's anger morphed into wordless horror.  Merlin turned to see what had caused that reaction, and his heart stuttered in his chest. He feared for a moment the messenger was already dead, for he was coated head to toe in a liquid of bright red.

"It's raining blood, Your Majesty."

The pounding of the torrential rain against the fabric of the tent was all that could be heard following this bleak statement, with the blood-coated messenger standing as physical proof of the veracity of those words.

"Perhaps it is another coincidence?" mocked Vivienne. "How unfortunate that the first natural rainfall of blood should happen to occur when you have broken an ancient prohibition set by those dwelling in the heavens from which it falls."

Vortigern looked as though he rather wanted to strangle her, but nonetheless he ordered the messenger in a tight voice, "Gather my best mages and tell them to prepare the ritual ground. We're going to send Emrys home."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Merlin hardly dared to open his eyes, but when he did the first thing that he noted as that the sun was shining in a blue sky, with no shooting stars or red rain smearing in macabre puddles on the ground. Merlin looked over to Will, who was also looking up with an expression of utmost relief.

"It's like it never happened." They weren't even coated in blood as proof, for Vortigern had muttered some spell that cast a shimmering ball of light over the area with the stone alter, saying something about how he couldn't have anything interfering with the ritual. They'd then taken off the blood smeared rain cloaks they'd been lent to wear there so that they didn't end up stealing them when Vortigern sent them home.

Merlin noted the position of the sun in the sky. It was almost directly above them at nearly noon. "Come on, we must have been gone for a whole day. Our mothers must be worried sick."

He couldn't look at the entrance to the Tunnels behind him, void of Aithusa. He didn't think he'd be able to ever come to them again without feeling her loss like a gaping hole in his heart, as achingly empty as the Tunnels themselves. Will tagged along after him, and as they walked they bounced ideas back and forth about what to tell Will's mother and the villagers about where they'd been. Telling the truth – that they were kidnapped by lunatic sorcerers – would be liable to land them both wallops to their behinds for lying as well as add further fuel to the never fading rumours of Merlin's possession by evil spirits.

They decided to go to Merlin's mother first, in the hope that she would help them devise a cover story. He threw open the door to see her tying a bandage on a little girl's arm. She murmured a couple of reassurances to the girl, sending her away with a jar of ointment, before looking up. She looked surprised to see Merlin, but did not rush forwards to greet him in relief or berate him for disappearing or any of the other scenarios that had been playing through his mind.

She simply glanced from Will to Merlin, and said, "Back already?"

Merlin gaped at her. "Already? I've been gone for ages! Didn't you wonder where I was?"

"Whatever are you talking about?" Hunith said in confusion, looking at him as though he said something strange. "You've only been gone an hour."

That was impossible. Just the trip to and from the Tunnels took up an hour, never mind everything else they'd had to do to get home. The eclipse meant he couldn't accurately judge how much time had passed, but he knew they had spent hours in that strange place.

His mother just handed him a bucket of water, as though her son had not been missing and everything was perfectly normal. "Well, since you're back could you go fetch the water?"

Merlin took the bucket numbly, walking out the door. Once it shut behind him Will said in confusion, "Do you think we just dreamed it? I mean – evil mad kings and ancient moz-acks and doors in hills and blood rain? Sure sounds like a dream to me."

It was a tempting explanation. Merlin would love to write off everything that happened under the unnatural black sky as the product of his unconscious mind, to tell Will _yes_ and make a pact to never speak of it again. Standing before Vortigern wondering if he was going to die and the weight of his and his friend's futures resting on his ability to decipher a riddle was an experience he would be glad to shove into the recesses of his mind, left to be repressed and forgotten entirely as time went on.

But he couldn't. "No. Aithusa is gone; it can't have been a dream."

She was counting on him to right the world for her, so that one day she could wake from her slumber and fly free with the remainder of her kin beside her. He couldn't selfishly pretend that it never happened and leave her to sleep in the hills near Dinas Emrys for all eternity. He looked to the sky, clear and blue and free of portents from angry gods, and vowed again that someday he would see two dragons flying through it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll leave it to your imaginations whether a variation of this double-chapter happened in canon. Personally, I like to think without Aithusa's absence as proof Merlin made that pact with Will and by Season 1 only recalled the events as a half-forgotten dream.
> 
> I hope I haven't offended anyone with my reinterpretation of the dragons, but the Saxons weren't a big part of the show so I wanted the symbolism to be a bit broader.
> 
> Merlin hiding treasure in a cave and a "golden-haired and blue-eyed" person being destined to find it is a local legend I found on the Dinas Emrys Wikipedia page. It was too perfect to leave out.
> 
> I looked up reptile vision and apparently not only can reptiles with round pupils see colour, but most can see ultraviolet light and a few can see infrared light. Who knew?
> 
> For those of you rusty on Greek legends, Vivienne was comparing herself to a Trojan princess cursed to see the future but never be believed, and thus failed in all her attempts to prevent the downfall of Troy.


	13. 0x13 - Master and Apprentice

Through the crystals, Ingild's magnified eyes narrowed at him as the gold leeched out of them. He thrust the crystals back to Oilell, standing behind him with the box as she did each year, her eyes having already returned to an innocent brown. Merlin would have thought with time she would grow less jumpy, but if anything she fumbled the crystals worse year after year. This year she dropped them, eyes going wide with horror at her blunder and practically throwing herself to the ground to scramble for them.

Ingild raised a hand as though to strike her, then his eyes flittered in Merlin's direction and his hand continued upwards to rake his fingers through his receding hairline. Oilell shut the crystals in the box and straightened, keeping a wary eye on her master. She bowed briefly to Merlin behind her master's back and, as always, Merlin offered a weak smile in return, not quite sure what to think of her.

He'd never met anyone so timid, whose spark was so thoroughly beaten out of them. Yet Oilell's yearly unspecified act of magic immediately before the examination's completion was the only explanation he and his mother could think of for why the court sorcerer himself continued to be unable to sense Merlin's magic. The sorcerer's apprentice never left his side so they were unable to ask her why she was risking punishment to help him. His mother theorized that she saw herself in Merlin's place and was trying to save him from her fate; an explanation that was plausible, but didn't explain why she bowed to him at least once every time they crossed paths.

"So, did you see anything?" Merlin asked, even though it was obvious from Ingild's face he hadn't.

In Merlin's younger years the check-ups had ended in disappointment for Ingild, but he hadn't seemed overly bothered by Merlin's continued lack of magic. After he returned three years ago to find Merlin had shot up to tower over him and even surpassed his mother - tall for a woman - in height, however, Ingild had initially been very excited. When the test results were again negative he'd frowned and redid it, looking baffled at the continued negative results. In the years since then, he'd peer at Merlin more closely and insist Hunith remain where he could see her during his examination, watching them suspiciously while he did his spell.

"No," was Ingild's curt answer.

"That's too bad," Hunith said genially, placing a hand on her son's shoulder as though to comfort him in his supposed disappointment.

"Indeed," Ingild said sourly. "The term for Oilell's apprenticeship is coming up and I was hoping to find a replacement for her."

Oilell surprisingly did not look heartened by these words. He would have thought she would be happy to be leaving Ingild, whom she seemed so afraid of, but if anything this reminder seemed to put her more on edge. Perhaps she was concerned for her future replacement? Being Ingild's slave in all but name was not a fate Merlin would wish on anyone.

"Perhaps you'll have better luck next time," Hunith rose from her chair, and made her way over to the door to see them out. It was getting late, so it was unlikely that Ingild was planning to tarry in the village as he did some years, speaking to people that Merlin would rather he didn't, such as Old Man Simmons.

Ingild stayed seated, raising the glass of water Hunith had given him earlier in an unhurried sip. Hunith stood awkwardly by the door while he finished his drink, placing the cup back on the table in his own time. After drawing out the process longer than he needed to, he said casually, "I don't meant to impose, but the journey back to the capital is a long one and it's getting late. You don't mind if I stay the night?"

Hunith stiffened by the door, and Merlin knew what she was thinking because the same thoughts were going through his mind: Ingild had planned for this. He'd come late in the day on purpose so he could make this excuse, perhaps hoping to catch Merlin in a revealing slip-up while he was less on guard than during the examinations.

They could refuse him, but they were already walking on thin ice with him. They couldn't afford to raise his suspicions any further. They weren't certain what kind of political clout he carried with the king, but the fact that he was allowed to continue these check-ups long after the investigation of Merlin's father's death was over made them wary of his influence.

Hunith's face smoothed into a forced friendly position, which looked painful to Merlin. "Of course not. Make yourself at home."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

When he was told a great oak tree had fallen during the night to block the road, Merlin felt he should have seen it coming. Ingild's shock and disappointment at the news was unconvincing, especially considering he could probably clear it with a wave of his hand. "It looks like I have no choice but to stay here for now."

Under the pretense of helping, he dogged Merlin's footsteps. Random objects were in Merlin's path to trip him when they hadn't been before, metal suddenly turned red-hot and dropped from his burned hands with a pained cry, and all sorts of other minor mishaps followed him. He had to consciously force himself to push back his instinctual magic to avoid correcting them. There were a few objects pausing for a split second in their descent to the ground, but otherwise Merlin for the most part was successful. To his relief, Ingild didn't seem any less frustrated, which he took to mean these minor lapses of control had passed by his peeled eyes.

All through the day he could feel those eyes burning a hole in his back, and he grasped for ideas for how to get him to leave. It seemed that lying low was his best bet, but as the day progressed and the incidents intensified he began to wonder if Ingild's schemes would succeed through sheer survival instinct.

When water was needed to be fetched for the laundry, Merlin gladly volunteered. His hope that public scrutiny would postpone magical accidents was dashed, however, when to Merlin's dismay he saw the street was deserted.

He quickened his pace, and pulled the well rope with greater force than necessary, uncaring that water was probably sloshing out of the bucket. He could feel Ingild's calculating gaze on his back as he reached down to grab the bucket, wishing he hadn't left his house.

A force like a massive gale slammed into his back and Merlin lurched forwards, flailing his arms. Somehow - impossibly given the well's small diameter - to his horror he pitched head-first down the well as though he'd dived in deliberately. He stretched out his limbs, slowing his descent to a halt, and he awkwardly tried to climb upwards while upside down. Immediately the walls became slick and his grip started to slide, and instead of ascending no matter how desperately he scrambled he was descending inch by sickening inch.

His heartbeat pounded in his ears and he couldn't tell if he was dizzy from blood rushing to his head or the knowledge that he was stuck in a well and upside down with no room to turn and sinking. He could barely see the grey sky through the tangle of limbs above him, but even though he couldn't see him the weight of Ingild's gaze was heavy.

Ingild was going to kill him if he couldn't prove himself magical. Why was he even so sure Merlin had magic despite any evidence? Perhaps he wasn't trying to kill him, just scare him into revealing himself? But if he wasn't bluffing and Merlin didn't act he would die, slowing sliding until his head was submerged and his lungs filled with water.

Merlin was saved from his debate by a grip closing around his ankles and roughly yanking him upwards. He cleared the well and was dragged so his legs were on the ground and his face lay on the cool stone of the rim, with Mathew's weathered face peering into his in concern. To the side lay Ingild, sprawled on the ground as though he'd been shoved aside.

"Are you alright?" Mathew asked gruffly, and once Merlin gave a shaky nod he rounded on Ingild. "You were standing _right there_ , why didn't you grab him?"

Ingild pushed himself off the ground, brushing the dirt off his clothes as though it was a personal offense that it should be there. He gave an unconvincing, "Must have frozen, so sorry. Don't know what came over me."

Mathew narrowed his eyes, looking between Merlin's face - which felt utterly drained of all the blood that rushed to it while he was upside down - and Ingild's, which was still lowered to face his clothing instead of them.

"It's taking longer than we thought to clear the road, if we don't get more men to help then it might not be done by nightfall," he said with an edge to his voice, folding his arms over his chest as he stared down Ingild. "Seeing as you're the one who's waiting to return to the capital, it only seems fair that you be the one to pitch in, doesn't it?"

Ingild's head jerked up, open mouthed and looking as though he wanted to protest. Whatever he wanted to say died off at the expression on Mathew's face, which brooked no arguments. He straightened up and cleared his throat. "Of course," he said reluctantly, his eyes darting to Merlin's for a split second. "I'll just inform my apprentice where I'm going, then."

Mathew placed a hand on Merlin's shoulder, giving a reassuring squeeze, and they waited for a moment while Ingild ducked back into the house. When he came out Oilell trailed behind him like a whipped dog. She was holding a bucket protectively against her like a young child with a security blanket. Ingild gestured to her and said,

"My apprentice has agreed to help you, Merlin, to make up for the way that I froze. I do hope that you'll forgive me."

Merlin gave a wooden _of course_ and watched as Mathew and Ingild followed the road outside the village and into the woods, with Ingild walking slowly and Mathew practically stepping on his heels. He glanced briefly at Oilell, whose head was bent so a curtain of stringy hair concealed her face, and then looked away awkwardly. He was hyperaware of the fact that this was the first time he'd been around her without Ingild breathing down both their necks.

He turned away from her and re-lowered the bucket into the well, pulling it up this time without the near death experience. Oilell moved to lower her bucket, and he took it from her. "You don't have to help me," he craned his neck at an uncomfortable angle to look at her, but she flinched away, lowering her head more as though there was something terribly fascinating on the ground.

"I mean, we both know what your master really wants is for you to tail me, so it's not like he'd care if you didn't. And I don't mind - it's not your fault he tried to kill me and I'm really grateful for the help you've already given me. So you don't need to help me with my chores too, if you don't want to."

Oilell didn't reply - merely held out her hands to take the bucket, bringing into focus the strange band of lighter coloured skin around her wrists and the inky black symbol on the back of her right hand. He gave it to her, feeling as though he was talking to a wall as he continued blathering to fill the awkward silence, "Or you could, if you don't mind. Thanks, it's nice of you."

She ducked her head as though respectfully acknowledging the thanks, and turned back towards the house. Merlin followed her there, trying to think of a time he'd heard her speak and failing, wondering if she was a mute.

They filled the laundry basin in silence, Merlin taking the more rigorous job of scrubbing the clothes and leaving Oilell the more lax task of hanging the laundry to dry. As it looked likely to rain she did this on a line inside, and they both worked in silence. Merlin wondered where his mother had gone off to, but when he asked Oilell she mumbled something unintelligible, proving herself not mute but otherwise being uninformative. He'd had to look around for clues to see that his mother's medicine bag was missing to work out why she'd left so suddenly.

At last, unable to stand the silence, Merlin raked his brains for something about her appearance to compliment Oilell on. The problem was that Oilell - while not ugly - had rather bland features and her clothes were rags even by backwater village standards. There was only one thing about her that stood out in a good way, and Merlin seized on it.

"That's a pretty tattoo." Oilell ducked her head, turning to adjust one of Hunith's dresses that she'd already hung up. Unintentionally this displayed the three simple but graceful spirals on the outside skin of her hand. "Where'd you get it?"

Oilell's voice was muffled and nearly inaudible, but this time Merlin was ready for that and straining forwards was just able to make out, _my grandmother_. Encouraged that she'd responded, Merlin prodded again, "Yeah? I like the design. Is there any special meaning behind it?"

Oilell stepped away from the already hung up dress and took another sopping wet dress from Merlin, avoiding his gaze as she mumbled, "It's my people's symbol."

"Really? So then who are your people?" Merlin asked curiously.

It was strange enough to think of Oilell as having a grandmother, much less a group of people she belonged to. When he was younger, Oilell had been more a fixture than a person to him; something that came into his life once a year, but otherwise hardly existed. As he grew older intellectually he knew she must have a past before he met her and do other things when he didn't see her, but trying to picture what her life was like left him with nothing but murky darkness.

"The druids."

Merlin's interest was further piqued; he knew next to nothing but the druids. "Were you born a druid?"

She nodded, facing the dress she was meticulously hanging with far more attention than the task deserved. Merlin was barely glancing down at the clothing he was washing now, trying to read her expression by the tilt of the back of her head. He couldn't tell whether this was a topic she wanted to avoid, or merely a manifestation of her crippling ever-present skittishness.

He ventured, "What was it like, growing up as a druid?"

She mumbled something too low for him to hear, and Merlin debated asking her to speak louder but decided he didn't want to embarrass her by implying she wasn't speaking loud enough - even if she wasn't. "Hmm, I see... Are you going to go see your family once your apprenticeship is done?"

She shook her head, saying just loud enough for him to hear. "I can't." He was about to ask _why not?_ but Oilell must have sensed the upcoming question because she continued, "The Purge... they're dead."

Merlin's hands stilled in the soapy water, guilt stabbing him in the chest. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have brought it up. I - I'm really sorry."

Oilell turned her head so that she was half-facing him, and made a little wavy motion with her hand that looked like she might be trying to tell him not to worry about it. Her head was still lowered, but Merlin thought he could see her eyes occasionally darting up from the floor to him when she said, "They'd be honoured you asked."

"Why?" Merlin asked, baffled.

"You give us hope," she said simply, as though that was a forgone conclusion she was surprised he hadn't reached himself.

"What? What do you mean?"

Oilell looked up fully at him for the first time, searching his face the way he was searching hers. She seemed to be waiting for him to come to some realization, but when he continued staring at her waiting for clarification she seemed to come to one of her own. Hurriedly she snatched a new piece of cloth and turned away from him. "Forget what I said."

That only intrigued Merlin more. "Why don't you want to tell me? I've never even _met_ any druids other than you, how would they know who I am, let alone get hope from me?"

"Please don't ask me to speak of the future," she enunciated clearly in a normal volume. It sounded almost deafeningly loud in comparison to her previous barely audible answers.

"Why not?"

He didn't know how she could know his future, but the thought of being told it was enticing. And seeing as she was apprenticed to a prestigious sorcerer, her words had more credence than normal fortune-tellers. It was all rather pointless to think about, though, if she refused to tell him anything.

Oilell fussed with the bandages she had grabbed, trying to get them to all hang evenly at the same height and distance apart. "Oilell?" Merlin called softly, as though speaking to an injured child. "Why won't you tell me?"

Oilell's hands stilled in their needless fussing and her fingers tightened around the bandage she was holding, bunching the fabric. Her voice shook when she said, "Once, I dreamed a dream of things to come. Take my advice: knowing one's future is a wretched thing. Please, don't ask me again."

It was more words strung together than in any of her previous utterances, and he wondered if that meant she felt strongly about it.

A tense silence lay between them after that, only broken when Hunith returned. Mother and son chatted idly, and Oilell stood off to the side in silence. Merlin looked over to her occasionally, but she made no attempt to even acknowledge that there were other people in the same room as her, much less make eye contact or join their conversation.

At nightfall Ingild returned, sour-faced, with the news that the road had been cleared and they would leave at first light in the morning.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

Once Ingild and Oilell's retreating figures disappeared down the road, Merlin and Hunith could breathe again. Merlin rubbed his eyes; he hadn't slept well the night before, convinced that Ingild would make another attempt while he was most vulnerable. Beside him his mother stifled a yawn and he knew he hadn't been alone in this thought. Despite their worries, however, nothing had happened.

Throughout the day Merlin could scarcely believe they would be allowed to return so easily to the pattern of their normal lives. It struck him as odd that Ingild would so meekly accept Mathew's rebuke and leave with no further incidents after risking manslaughter to expose him. Every time the wind rattled the shutters he glanced over his shoulders in alarm, half-expecting to see the sorcerer returned to harass him. He knew he was not alone in his worries when Hunith insisted he take Will with him to fetch firewood.

"Soo…" Will began as soon as they'd made it to the treeline and could be reasonably sure no one from the village would overhear them. "Mathew came back from fetching an axe yesterday with your stalker in tow, and let me just say neither of them looked particularly happy with the other. Care to explain?"

"You were on the work crew?" Merlin asked. He hadn't seen Will in the fields the day before and wondered where he went to, but assumed he was skiving the way he often did.

"I figured the sooner that man left the better for you, though I don't see why he couldn't just use magic. And you're not dodging my question that easily: what happened?"

Merlin launched into a downplayed version of the events of the day before while they gathered firewood, dawdling so they could talk where they didn't have to worry about snoopy gossips who were doubtlessly wondering the same thing as Will. They say nothing stays a secret in a small village, so Merlin considered it a minor miracle no one but Will – and possibly that old woman that Old Man Simmons would never shut up about – had ever found him out.

Will wore a tight expression while he spoke, and Merlin knew from past experience he was angry on Merlin's behalf. The truth about "Hunith's old friend from her years in the capital" was one of the first things he'd told Will about years ago back in Vivienne's tent, and though at the time Will had been mildly surprised (given everything else going on a suspicious court sorcerer hadn't seemed so strange) it wasn't until Ingild's next visit that fiery anger burned in his eyes at the mention of the man. Merlin suspected it was Oilell's presence that did it; it was one thing to be told if Ingild found Merlin out he likely wouldn't be treated well, it was another to see Merlin's possible future in the very jittery flesh.

After Ingild left that year, Will had latched onto Merlin's arm so hard it left bruises and made him swear he would never let Ingild find him out.

"You have to do something about him," Will said, not for the first time. His neck was craned at an awkward angle to talk to Merlin while he gathered up pieces of stray wood without looking to see what he was doing.

"He's gone, I'm fine." It was a weak argument.

And so he couldn't be surprised when Will easily countered with, "And what about next year? Merlin, he almost killed you. What if next year he succeeds? What if he doesn't wait a year this time, just turns up in a month or two when you're not expecting him and catches you in a moment of carelessness? You can't just ignore the problem and hope it will go away on its own!"

"I'll be cautious. Don't worry." Merlin insisted, unable to think up a more solid argument.

Ingild had been a problem for as long as he could remember, coming once every year to cast a shadow on Merlin's life and remind him – as if his mother's cautions and the magic bubbling within him poorly contained by sheer willpower wasn't reminder enough – that Merlin was abnormal. Since before he was old enough to be conscious of what he was doing, his entire world had revolved around trying to hide his abnormality.

Despite this, nothing made him feel like he was truly the freak who a nice woman like Catrin feared to antagonize more than when he was sitting across the table from the man from the capital being peered at like a piece of meat for signs of defect. No one else he knew ever had anyone scrutinize them in that way. And Ingild never gave up, as though even without his testing equipment he could sense something not quite right with the gangly boy named Merlin.

Ingild had been a fixture in his life for so long it was hard to think of him as a true threat. After all, every year Oilell's eyes would glow immediately before the test's completion and Ingild would lower his crystals and say that he saw no signs of magic. But Oilell was completing her apprenticeship soon. She wouldn't be there to shield him next year.

Merlin would have to be the one to, as Will put it, do something. But even if instructions for Oilell's enchantment to conceal magic floated down on a scrap of parchment from the heavens to him, there was no way for him to cast the spell while under Ingild's scrutiny without the iris colour change giving him away just as surely as the test would. If only he knew how to wield his magic for more complex tasks than stopping the descent of falling objects - then perhaps he could best Ingild. But he didn't even know where to begin to look for teaching.

If only his father was here. Merlin's memories were an indistinct blur of impressions, something that seemed grossly unfair. He remembered a deep voice and the scratch of a beard when he kissed his cheeks, big strong hands and a tall sturdy body that he climbed like a squirrel scurrying up a tree, inventive games that taught him caution in a way even a child could understand, and waiting for the door to open each day to signal his father's arrival.

But there were so many things he had been too young to know about his father. That his father also had magic was not something he had realized until several years after his death, when it occurred to him that someone needed to have enchanted Magic the toy dragon to change colours. Or that the dreaded men in red hadn't been looking for him that day at all, but rather his father who had a bitter history with them going back to before Merlin was born. Or that there was a reason a good deal of his childhood toys and stories involved dragons, something that his mother had only reluctantly explained to him when he started questioning why he was the only one who could communicate with Aithusa.

His father could have been his mentor and teacher, teaching him spells and control and how to deal with people who wanted to exploit him for his powers. But he was dead, and - though his mother did her best to help him - she knew little about magic. Had it not been for Oilell serving as an example of what awaited him if Ingild discovered his gifts, he probably would have begged him to teach him out of sheer desperation.

There was no one he trusted who could help him, and he didn't know how to help himself when he was against a trained opponent. His impotence in the face of Vortigern's magic was something he would never forget. He had been forced to just stand there while over his head two strangers argued, his life dangling by a vulnerable thread at the mercy of a lunatic's whims. He never wanted to feel so completely helpless again, but if Ingild's suspicions were confirmed he'd be in exactly the same position as when he was nine and a robed man pulled out a dagger.

"We should be heading back," Merlin said, because he didn't want to continue this conversation where Will told things he was already far too aware of.

Will's looked unimpressed by Merlin's attempt to cut off their argument, and he started to say something that from his tone would have been scathing. Merlin would never know what he meant to say, though, as he was barely three words in when an ominous crack punctuated his words.

The thickest tree nearby was swaying, slowly tipping towards Will with creaks that promised nothing good. With a loud snap, the trunk sped up in a hasty descent as though felled by an invisible axe. Without receiving any command from his brain, Merlin's arm instinctively shot out towards Will who was out of his reach. A blazing sensation flaring within his eye sockets and Will flew backwards as though pushed, landing unhurt on his bottom.

Merlin let out a breath in relief, calling out, "You alright?"

Will pushed himself upwards with a groan, grunting the first syllables of an affirmation before his eyes widened with something like horror and he started forwards, exclaiming,

"Merlin, behind you!"

Merlin spun on his heel. There, at the edge of the treeline looking straight at him with an expression of triumph, was the court sorcerer.

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

He was alone in an empty room lit by a single candle, containing one bed and a table.  He had no idea where it was or how he had gotten there. He guessed Ingild must have knocked him out or placed a spell on him, but it seemed to him that one moment he was standing in the woods and the next he was laying on his back in an unfamiliar room, with no transition between the two scenes other than perhaps a blink.

Experimentally he wiggled his arms and legs, and found he was tied head to toe with thin chains. After a bit of thrashing on the floor – where he may or may not have hit his head against the wall more times than he cared to admit to – he gave up on freeing himself by simple struggling. He closed his eyes, concentrating as hard as he could on the idea of forcing the chains off him, and reached deep within himself to where his magic lay. The second he grabbed a tendril of it, the chains constricted so he could hardly breathe. He pushed at them with his magic and they seared him with red-hot heat. Wheezing, he opened his eyes and let go of the magical tendril.

He should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

The creak of floorboards echoed outside the room, and the door creaked open. In stepped Oilell, dressed in a different raggedy dress than she'd worn the day she departed Ealdor. Around her wrists concealing the pale strip of a tan line were iron cuffs etched with a complex array of symbols and runes, which despite being decorated looked more like chainless shackles than a piece of jewelry. She walked straight over to Merlin and knelt down beside him, looking unsurprised to see him conscious.

Merlin asked the only thing that could be asked in a situation like this. "What happened?"

"My master soon will need a new apprentice." Her eyes were unreadable, like she'd closed the shutters to her soul and refused to let anyone peek through to see what she was thinking. Though she still spoke softly it was well above the whisper she'd used in their previous conversation and, rather than giving off the perpetual terror which Merlin associated with her, her tone was as emotionless as the dead. "He doesn't have a year left to bide his time waiting for you."

Merlin called himself ten different names of fool, unable to believe his presumptuous stupidity. He'd taken it for granted that Ingild would continue following a pattern of one visit per year even after he'd branched out to attacking Merlin to get him to trip up. Why had he assumed he'd give up and leave just because he hadn't been successful yet and Mathew – a non-magical common villager he could kill with a few words – was suspicious of him? Ingild must have doubled back to force Merlin's hand when he didn't know he was being scrutinized, and how did such an obvious ploy not occur to him to suspect?

"I know the spell to release you from those chains," Oilell unexpectedly said, still inscrutable in her expression and tone. It was unnerving, as though Oilell was a completely different person. Merlin didn't think he'd ever seen her go so long without making a nervous movement of some kind.

"Will you use it?" Merlin asked, scarcely allowing himself to hope. Normally he'd believe Oilell would help him, but right now she was being even less understandable than usual, and she'd specifically phrased her sentence to not be an offer. Not to mention aiding in his escape in this way would surely incriminate her; she had no reason to risk Ingild's punishment over a boy who was almost a complete stranger. Merlin's carelessness had resulted in his capture; she was under no obligation to put herself in harm's way to fix his mistakes.

"That depends," she said in a deadened voice, "on whether you will make me a promise. You must promise to restore magic to the land. Only then will I help you."

Merlin felt like he was nine again, when Aithusa had shared her expectations of him. It was different this time though; he was no longer a child, but otherwise nothing had changed. He'd physically grown into the tall Merlin of Aithusa's dreams on the outside but on the inside he still felt the same size. Magic was no closer to being free, and despite his natural magical talent he was still as impotent to live up to Aithusa's great expectations as he was then.

"I'm sorry, I can't."

Something knowing, almost sympathy but with a mournful cast to it, flickered in her eyes. When she spoke her tone was gentler than before, and her voice cracked in places, "I don't expect you to do it today, tomorrow, this year, or the next. It doesn't matter to me when you fulfill your words. Only that you do everything in your power to do so."

She closed her eyes as though in pain, her face contorting into a grimace and her throat bobbed in a swallow. Her lips formed a single word and, though no sounds came through, the ghost of _please_ felt like a tangible weight on his shoulders.

"Then I promise to do all that I can." It was all that he could truthfully say, and he didn't want to make a promise he couldn't keep to Oilell, whom he already owed years' worth of debts. If it hadn't been for her, he would have been carried off by Ingild when he was four.

Oilell nodded slowly in acceptance. She took a deep breath, then opened her eyes and mumbled a string of foreign words, her eyes flaring with a golden hue at the end and the engravings on her wrist bands also glowing. The chains slid off Merlin like water off grease, and he stretched out his limbs only then discovering how stiff he was.

"Thank you." Merlin rose and walked to the door, stopping at the threshold and looking back to Oilell, still kneeling on the floor.

Now that he was free, his earlier thoughts about how Oilell would likely be punished for helping him escape came crashing down on him like a weight made out of guilt. "You can come with me if you want," he offered. When she looked taken aback, he hastily elaborated, "I'm pretty sure Ingild's going to work out I didn't free myself and I don't want you to take the blame."

Oilell rose and came forwards until she was standing two feet in front of him, and for a moment he thought she was going to accept. Instead, she lifted the hem of her skirt, revealing ankles shod in shackle-like iron circlets similar to the ones on her wrists. "For the duration of my apprenticeship, these alert my master to my location. I can't escape him."

Merlin couldn't take his eyes off them. How could two simple rings of metal do something so sinister? Oilell might as well be chained up like a prisoner, or kept in a cage like a captive bird. "I am so sorry."

She shook her head, dropping her skirts to conceal the chainless fetters around her ankles. "It's not your fault."

"But Ingild will punish you on my account, all because you helped me."

"That won't be a problem," she said, some emotion he couldn't name flickering in her eyes. He got the feeling she was choosing her words with care when she said, "My apprenticeship is nearing the end and I do know magic. He will not be able to hurt me, or come after you."

Merlin got the distinct feeling that there was something she was not telling him, but – as much as it galled him to admit it – Oilell was more capable of looking after herself than he would be of looking after her. She was a nearly fully trained enchantress, while he was a peasant boy who could do paltry tricks like stop a clay pitcher from smashing. What exactly could he do for her that she wouldn't be able to do for herself?

He couldn't save her from her master and whatever it was she had censored from her reassurance, because he couldn't even save himself. Not now, not when he was nine and Vortigern was standing over him with a knife, and not when he was four and he couldn't find his own way home. He had been kidnapped three times, and each time he'd depended on other people to help free him: his mother, Vivienne, and Oilell. What was the point of possessing magic when he couldn't even use it for saving anything other than _pottery_?

He felt so useless.

"Farewell," Oilell said. "Don't forget your promise."

This would probably be the last he saw of Oilell. He would likely never know what became of her, whether she was fine or whether she had misjudged her abilities and she was hurt for her role in his escape. Since he was four she had protected him, and he had never repaid her except today with one promise which he had no idea how to fulfill.

Impulsively, Merlin threw his arms around her. She stiffened in the hug, and he thought that this probably wasn't his smartest move when physical contact always seemed to make Oilell jump. When he awkwardly started to extract himself from the embrace, however, her arms hesitantly rose to encircle him loosely, shifting in position as though she didn't know where to place them. The reciprocated hug only lasted briefly before she pushed him away, her head lowered so that he could only see the slightly crooked part of her hairline.

"Go," she whispered, pushing him away and to the other side of the doorway. Her hand closed around the door knob, but she did not shut the door.

"Thank you for everything." When those words seemed insufficient in light of all she'd done for him with no true reward, he added, "I'll never forget you."

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

When the tall, gangly dark haired boy turned the corner she lowered the curtains and turned from the window she'd been watching out of, sidestepping the bundle of pillows stuffed under a blanket where Emrys had been chained up before.

It was done. For eighteen years she'd trembled and prayed to any gods who would listen and fought against this moment, and in the end she had changed nothing. Knowing the future was a wretched thing indeed.

Once, she'd dreamed a dream of things to come, and woken with her throat torn up from her screams.

Her mother stroked her hair and her father fetched the Ollam to heal her throat, and when she was well enough to speak again she told them of what she'd seen. Then her mother had lied and said it was all just a dream, but she could feel her frame shaking as she hugged her like she was saying goodbye. Her father clasped his hand on her shoulder and told her to be brave, called it an honour for the fates to choose his daughter as the childhood protector of Emrys.

She hadn't felt honoured, only terrified.

The door opened behind her, and the stumbling heavy footsteps were so familiar that even if she didn't know who had the other key to the room she would have been able to identify the owner. She turned to face her master, taking in his red cheeks and the way his squinting eyes couldn't seem to focus on her face as he stumbled towards her, giving the lumpy outline under a blanket where Emrys had been only a cursory glance. The potion she'd slipped into his mead was already taking effect.

"You using magic, girl?" he slurred, fumbling with the crystal hanging around his neck accusingly, waving its fading glow in her face and grabbing her arm, looking pointedly to where her wrist bands had not yet completely faded from their telltale golden glow. She was slightly impressed he'd noticed, inebriated as he was.

She nodded meekly, trying for the usual terror that filled her in his presence but not sure she was doing a convincing job. It was so pointless to be afraid of him now. Everything was so pointless now. "The room was cold," she lied. "I warmed it up a little."

Usually at this point she would be punished for using her magic without permission, but his heady good mood must have made him generous because he merely dropped her arm and grunted, "Don't do it again."

Humming an off-key poor attempt at a tune, he threw himself on the bed. "What a day," he sighed contently, closing his eyes. "I knew it; I knew such powerful magic couldn't have skipped a generation. They called me delusional for not giving up on getting the dragonlord's son. But I was right. I was right. I can't wait to see the looks on their faces."

As always he neither expected nor wanted any response from her. She'd almost forgotten how to converse, something she'd painfully been reminded of yesterday during Emrys' valiant attempts to talk to her. It was easiest and safest to only speak when asked a direct question, and even then it was best to answer in as few words as possible. But today she felt bold, and why shouldn't she?

For years she'd cowered from Ingild, cringing from the inventive punishments magic allowed him to inflict on her. She'd followed him like a dog even after he removed the physical iron leash that bound her to him, because the enchanted shackles chained her just as surely as interlocking metal links had. With her head down so she could not be accused of looking her betters in the eye and her lips sealed so none could say she was speaking out of turn, she lived like a corporeal ghost. She was afforded the notice of one too; even when describing in graphic detail the fates of her predecessors and betting on how her own apprenticeship would terminate, the courtiers acted as though they'd forgotten she was present.

So while Ingild mocked her for not being as quick-minded as Esmeralda nor as charming as Grettel nor as magically talented as Briston, she reminded herself of their grisly fates and that she had lasted more than twice as long as any of them. Fake ineptitude made her not a threat to Ingild's position, and consequently her apprenticeship not only was not cut short by a tragic accident but was renewed at the seven year completion date, an action so uncharacteristic for Ingild that it caused a flurry of saucy court rumours. The renewal, however, was something that by law could only be done once – a law ironically implemented long ago by a just king to protect apprentices from exploitative masters. She was out of time as everything she'd been delaying caught up with her.

She raised her hand towards Ingild, shaking uncontrollably even as resolve settled over her like a crushing cloak. Her bridges were rapidly being burned – some by her, some by the unstoppable force of time. She couldn't go back now that she'd freed Emrys; if Ingild wasn't muddled by a spiked drink then he wouldn't be fooled by the lumpy shape of a blanket thrown over some pillows. Drugging him could only be a temporary solution.

She closed her eyes so she didn't have to see what she was about to do, and whispered a word to put Ingild to sleep. She didn't want to think about what she was doing, and that would be so much easier if she didn't have to struggle to overpower another sorcerer, even a drugged one.

As she began the incantation the circlets on her arms began to warm. At the beginning it was a warning, like metal left too long in direct sunlight on a warm day, but as the spell progressed she felt like she was wearing bracelets of fire. A stench like frying meat assaulted her nose and between her choked words she could hear sizzling and popping. At last she reached the end of the incantation, pushing out a final wave of magic to finish her spell as she held in a scream. The salty taste of blood filled her mouth; without even being aware of doing so, she'd bitten her tongue to stay silent. With a final searing flare that was so painful she thought she'd passing out, her spell reached completion. At that same moment she lost all sensation below her wrists and the magical core within her she'd spent years delving into was ripped away, leaving her feeling cold and empty inside like a lantern without a flame.

She dropped her arm before she opened her eyes and quickly raised her head so that it was held as high as a haughty noblewoman's, unable to bear the sight of the mottled red and black flesh of her lower forearms. She couldn't feel it, she couldn't bear the sight of it, but she couldn't stop herself from smelling it. Before her lay Ingild on the bed, unmoving as though he had fallen asleep. Childishly, even though she knew it was avoiding reality to do so, she wanted to believe he had.

That way she wouldn't have to admit to herself that she'd killed a man in cold blood.

Dear Triple Goddess, she'd gone through with it. She was a murderer.

She felt like she should be tearing herself apart with guilt, but all she could feel was a horrified disconnect to the scene in front of her. Like she still that little girl, asleep in bed beside her family, watching a surreal progression of years in snatches of blurred scenes which became progressively darker the longer the dream went on, until she was watching herself as a grown woman destroy her own flesh to kill a sleeping man.

As she hysterically screamed in her sleep, reaching forwards in vain to try and influence an image, the scene had shifted so that she was watching herself – shaggy and unkempt as though she was a common criminal on the run – sprinting while horsemen chased after her, her dead charred arms flopping as a useless burden on each side. She'd skidded to a halt, tripping and falling on her face without her arms to catch herself, as they closed in around her. Then the scene changed one final time, so that she was watching her dead body hanging suspended by a noose in a cold stone court yard, her eyes a pulverized mess and bones showing through where birds were ripping away her flesh piece by bloody piece.

She'd set Emrys free and damned herself in the process. She'd spent years telling herself she wouldn't do it, that she didn't care about honour and fate could go to hell, but in the end she'd done it. Now that numbness had replaced her terror, was it acceptance or surrender she was feeling?

Because once, she'd dreamed a nightmare of terrifying things to come, and yet when on that critical day she stood in the darkened cottage looking into the deep blue eyes of a guileless four-year-old she hadn't been able to save herself by doing nothing. She'd incanted a spell in her mind and saved the little boy in front of her, knowing she was dooming herself in doing so, a decision she had to make over and over, year after year as the temptation of self-preservation warred with her conscience. Somehow, at the moment when it truly mattered, her conscience would win.

It would have been so much easier if she had just been allowed to risk her life for Emrys' life, but in knowing what was to come she hadn't risked it – she'd given it. And that was much bitterer a cup to drink.

She'd wanted to be able to hate him so badly. If she hated him then she could have let him die, and hoped that someone else would free her people. But she couldn't; he'd been young and helpless and afraid, just like her when Ingild had held crystals up to her face and revealed what she was with a string of words in the Old Tongue that doomed her to fourteen years as his slave. And he had a certain charm to him that one would expect from Emrys; she couldn't express what it was but every time she saw him there was something in his eyes that drew her to him and made her want to protect him for another year, her resolve to do otherwise thrown aside.

And he'd been kind to her, far kinder than anyone had been since alone she'd fled a burning camp to the sound of red-cloaked knights yelling battle commands pitched to carry over the sound of screaming. She was so used to being invisible that it had been jarring when he'd smiled shyly at her for the first time when he was seven, looking precious with too large ears sticking out over his face that was hesitantly happy to see her even though she stood in the shadow of a man who frightened him. His awkward attempts to talk to her yesterday had been equally discomforting and endearing.

She didn't want him to die, not just because of he was Emrys but because he was Merlin too. Emrys was a grand figure of prophecy, Merlin was a sweet little boy she'd watched grow in increments each year, until he stood over her in a frame that now seemed too tall and gawky for him but was easy to see someday cutting an impressive figure. It was some comfort to her to think that she would have been a part of the man he would one day become, even if in this life she would never see Albion in all its glory nor Emrys standing at the side of the Once and Future King.

Emrys had promised her he'd fulfill his destiny, as she had fulfilled hers. She had to believe that he would succeed. Perhaps when she was reborn, her next life would begin in Albion and she would be allowed the happiness she had been denied in this one.

She turned to leave, planning to run as far as she could before anyone found the dead body in the room. Even though the fates had cruelly informed her that she wouldn't be able to outrun her pursuers, she had to at least try.

 _Please_ , she begged the gods who'd never before answered her prayers, _don't let it be for nothing._

* ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ * . * ~ *

When the door opened to reveal Merlin's lanky frame, Hunith surged forwards to embrace her son. She buried her face in his shoulder, holding him tight for a long moment as she sagging against him in sheer relief.

"I thought I'd never see you again. Will told me what happened – he's gone to the capital now to try and locate you. I told him I'd have the supplies ready for when you both returned, so you could make a clean get away."

"That won't be necessary," Merlin pushed her back slightly, so they were standing at arms' length facing each other while they spoke, still clutching each other loosely as they spoke. She was glad he didn't let go completely; it felt as though she'd lose him again if he did. "Oilell let me go and she said she'd use magic to stop Ingild coming after me."

Hunith couldn't help but be dubious. If Oilell was able to overpower her master, then why did she always resemble a spooked rabbit at his slightest twitch? She held her tongue, not wanting to cause her son to panic, but pulled herself away to gather up a traveling pack that was already mostly put together. "Still, it's not safe for you to stay here now that others know about your gifts."

She handed him the pack. "Catrin's eldest took a message to Gaius for me, asking for him to take you in. There hasn't been enough time for me to get a reply yet, but I'm sure he won't refuse."

Merlin took the pack from her, staring at it like she'd handed him an alien object. Slowly, as though he thought he was missing something in her words, he said, "But… Gaius lives in Camelot."

"Yes."

He looked at her like she'd gone insane. "Camelot! As in, Uther's lands!"

"Yes, as in the land where none of the members of the royal court know about you," her usually nonexistent temper, which had been quieted in relief at seeing her son, rose again as she remembered Will's words the day he stumbled back from the woods. He'd been nearly incoherent with panic but made one thing very clear to her. "And no one else there will either, as long as you aren't rash enough to let more of your friends know your secret!"

Merlin's eyes widened, looking like he did when he was younger and she caught him with a hand in the bread box when it wasn't mealtime. "Imagine my shock when I find out that not only does Will know about you, but it wasn't even a recent discovery! How many times did I tell you he couldn't know, _how many times,_ Merlin! Did my warnings fall on deaf ears? What were you thinking! And you didn't even tell me that you'd let anything slip, so tell me now: how many of the others know things they shouldn't about you that you've never told me about?"

He was looking at her like she was a stranger. Hunith's temper was slow to be stirred and she couldn't remember the last time she'd raised her voice to him. More often she'd wonder if perhaps she wasn't strict enough with her son and if Merlin was in danger of being spoiled. But this was too far; he'd risked his safety and hadn't even seen fit to tell her he'd done so.

"Only Will knows, honestly," Merlin protested defensively. "And he's known for years now and never told anyone, I swear!"

Which would be all well and good, except that was Will wasn't the only one in the village with any knowledge of the oddities surrounding her boy. Catrin had witnessed him doing magic only a few moments after birth, and though she refused to admit anything one way or another the fearful placating attitude she used towards a little boy was the center of many village rumours. Old Ann had never truly left their family, haunting them from beyond the grave in Simmon's pronouncement of the unnaturalness of her death and dragging her baby's name into it. And though her neighbours had stopped asking her about it, she was sure that they hadn't forgotten the way she'd kept her window shutters closed for years at a time. The village knew too many strange things about Merlin for them to dismiss any new evidence, if Will ever let anything slip or egged Merlin on to do reckless stunts the way boys their age did with each other. And this was all assuming that – without Merlin's knowledge – no one else had seen Merlin slip up the way Will had.

"It doesn't matter, you can't stay in Ealdor anymore. It's not safe for you here."

"And it is in _Camelot_!"

"Yes!" she snapped. "In _Camelot_ no one knows you had gold eyes when you were born or were hidden away for years when you were young, or that strange things happen around you! You'll never be truly safe wherever you go, but at least in Camelot you can start a new slate."

Merlin looked as though she'd slapped him, and she felt a stab of guilt for her words, no matter how true they were. Counting to twenty to calm herself – something she hadn't done in years – Hunith cajoled, "It won't be so bad. The castle is beautiful, and the view from Gaius' chambers is breathtaking. You can see a real city market for the first time, and find a job somewhere. There's more people than you've ever seen living within the walls of the city, and new people come and go every day. I'm sure you'll make lots of friends. I know you don't remember Gaius very well, but he's really quite sweet once you get past some of his eccentricities. And he knows more about magic than anyone I know."

Something sparked in Merlin's eyes with that last statement, and she could see him finally begin to consider it. Gently, she continued with the argument that she was sure would convince him. "He can help you learn how to use your gifts, I'm sure."

She didn't say anything more, and Merlin seemed to be thinking hard for a good long while. Once his face hardened into a decision, he slung the pack over his shoulders and hugged her once again. "I'll miss you. Tell Will goodbye for me?"

Hunith nodded, choking as she failed to hold back tears the spilling down her cheeks. Her baby was leaving home for another country, and she didn't know how long it would be until she saw him again. He'd be living in Camelot, learning magic under the nose of the man who'd killed his father for being a sorcerer. She swallowed, steeling herself for the loneliness and worry that she would surely feel when Merlin walked out her door never to come back to live with her again.

He needed to leave, he'd outgrown Ealdor long ago and it had taken nearly losing him to Ingild and finding out about Will to open her eyes to this. She feared what would become of him if he stayed trapped in this oppressive environment that ground him down into something he was not, squashing out all the joy and colour that magic brought to him. She didn't know why he'd been gifted with such powers, but it was surely not to till fields and feed the pigs while their neighbours whispered about him as though they thought they were being discrete. Merlin was meant for more, but first he needed to learn how to wield his gifts from the only sorcerer she trusted with her son.

His face was blurry through her tears, and she wiped her eyes so that the last she saw of him for a long while was a clear image. "Goodbye. Be careful, have fun, and, whatever happens, always be true to yourself."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> According to Wikipedia, the druids believed in reincarnation.
> 
> Oilell was originally inspired by Mordred's chat with Morgana in 5x02, when he says his life was difficult even in places that claimed to support magic.
> 
> Somehow, the more I wrote her the darker and darker her life became, until I was left looking at the screen of my laptop being really disturbed by what I just wrote.
> 
> RIP Oilell, killed by her conscience.


End file.
